14 / SEEDWORLD.COM SEPTEMBER 2018 AS A CHILD, 2018 Future Seed Giant Qingli Liu remembers running through the wheat field of his family’s small farm in his home country of China. “I didn’t know anything about (wheat) rust until college. When you ran through the field, your pants turned yellow and that was normal. It wasn’t until I was in college that I realized how this affected the yield and quality of the crop, as well as my fam- ily’s economic situation,” he says. Today, the Apex, North Carolina-based scientist serves as Syngenta’s project lead for soybean and sunflower disease control, with work focused on bringing broad resist- ance into many of Syngenta’s varieties. His work alone, however, wasn’t the deciding factor in his nomination for the Future Seed Giant award, as shared by his supervisor, Joseph Watts. Watts, a Syngenta research scientist and senior team leader, says that he nominated Liu because of his leadership and ability to draw on resources throughout the world. “It is rare to make a major scientific dis- covery, but even rarer to drive that discov- ery forward into a viable product to solve an unmet need in the world,” he says. Finding Science From a young age, Liu knew that he was interested in engineering and science, but it wasn’t until college that he discovered his passion for plant science and physiology. “I wasn’t thinking about working in agriculture until I got to college,” he says. “I discovered that I could major in plant protection and realized I could make a dif- ference for farmers around the world, just like the small farm I grew up on in China.” Earning both a Bachelor and a Master of Science degrees in China, Liu looked abroad in preparation to begin his doctor- ate, applying in Europe and the United States. Completing his doctoral work at the University of California, Davis, post-doctoral work at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and through his tenure with Syngenta, Liu has never regretted his decision to study in the U.S. COLLABORATIVE EFFORTS LEAD TO SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGHS The 2018 Future Giant of the seed industry excels not only because of his scientific expertise, but more so because of his ability to bring people together and to work toward a common goal. Laura Handke news@issuesink.com