SEPTEMBER 2018 SEEDWORLD.COM / 15 Finding a Niche “One of my mentors once told me that you should always work on a major dis- ease associated with a major crop so that you can make the most difference to the most people,” says Liu. Following that guidance, Liu currently devotes his time to the research and the development of innovative biologi- cal remedies to Asian Soybean Rust, a disease that inflicts billions of dollars of damage on global soybean production. The project, he says, wasn’t one that he and his team had to go in search of. “The disease created the opportunity because of the detriment it causes to soybean crops around the world. “In 2004, there was a lot of concern in North America about Asian Soybean Rust. Not many knew what the cost would be to manage the disease or if an effective management was possible if the disease were to spread to all of the main soybean states in the U.S.,” Liu says. “It is rare that you see a disease with this type of significant impact.” Making a Leader Devoting his career to the management of Asian Soybean Rust, Liu has embraced the many opportunities he has been given to grow professionally. “Building a project like this from the ground up is an endeavor that a scientist needs to be willing to stake their career on,” Liu says. “You’re looking at a 15-year timeline, and you don’t know if the dis- ease will still be relevant in 15 years.” The expectations of operationally delivering a market-applicable and afford- able product, and the development of the protocol necessary to ensure those things, were also new challenges for Liu. However, it is these challenges, along with the many others he has faced, that Liu credits with the development of his lead- ership style and the effective communica- tion strategies that led to his nomination for the Future Giant Award. “In the earliest years, before the project was a project, and not officially funded, we had to brainstorm and determine how the project was going to work,” he says. “That requires a lot of time. Being a good communicator was important, because I was sharing that this was something important to our industry and to farmers around the world. I was building the trust of my peers and supervisors, sharing that this was something I believed in.” While trust and communication were pivotal in the launch of the project, Liu says results are the driver that sustain a project through completion. And his team, he shares, has seen great results. Those successes, including the data the team has been able to collect in a rela- tively short amount of time, have kept the project moving forward. Liu is also quick to point out that while he accepted the Future Giant of the seed industry award, the work he does is wholly a team effort, with every team member holding stake in the project. “All of those successes come from teamwork,” he says. “We have a diverse team that covers the expertise needed at each stage of the project and that’s really how we can deliver results.” With his team spanning many coun- tries and continents, and engaged in a plethora of professional fields, Liu has not met many of those with whom he works on a daily basis. That is a communication challenge that many would find limiting. “There are many people on my team whom I have never met, but the way we work together — it just works,” he says. “Some say that I should go there (to each team members’ location) and meet all of them. I say that those budget dollars can be spent differently. They follow the protocol that I created and deliver what I expect. I don’t need to go there.” Regularly scheduled team meetings and updates also help Liu stay apprised of what’s happening at each phase of the project, helping him gain insight into each aspect of the team’s work. “I’m not going to tell my team what to do or how to do it. I want them to look at the data and tell me how it should be “It is rare to make a major scientific discovery, but even rarer to drive that discovery forward into a viable product to solve an unmet need in the world.” — Joseph Watts Qingli Liu serves as Syngenta's project lead for soybean and sunflower disease control.