b'This Global Team is Reprogramming Agriculturewith Stories, Soil and SupercomputersFrom ancient petroglyphs to quantum phenotyping, theyre crafting a future where food has deeper rootsand attendees of the 2025 NAPB meeting heard the message loud and clear.By: Marc Zienkiewicz, Seed World Canada Senior EditorOn the high, wind-scoured plateaus of northern Arizona, where rainfall is scarce and the soil seems to resist cultivation, a quiet agricultural miracle has persisted for over 3,000 years. In a place many would deem uninhabitable, Hopi farmers have coaxed corn, beans, squash, and melons from the earthwithout irrigation, fertilizers or machinery. Just knowledge.At the heart of this story is Michael Kotutwa Johnson, a Hopi dryland farmer and professor of Indigenous resilience at the University of Arizona. Johnson doesnt just study these ancient practiceshe lives them. Rooted in both science and ceremony, his work seeks not only to document but to revitalizeMichael Kotutwa Johnson is a Hopi the bio-cultural knowledge systems that have sustaineddryland farmer and professor of his people for generations. Indigenous resilience at the University of Arizona. Johnson At the 2025 National Association for Plant Breedingdoesnt just study these ancient (NAPB) conference in Kona, Hawaii, Johnsons voicepracticeshe lives them.added a powerful dimension to a meeting that was less about pipelines and patents and more about perspec-tivesredefining what plant breeding could and should be.I come from a place where we get six to 10 inches of rain a year, Johnson told the crowd. Yet weve been growing crops there for millennia. Without chemicals.Jaci Benson McRoberts serves as head of Without irrigation. Just by understanding our land anddata stewardship and digital enablement for the Data Science and Engineering listening to it. Capability Center in Vegetable R&D, That listening is not just ecological, he explains. ItsBayer Crop Science.relational. Spiritual. Cultural. Its encoded into stone and soil.38/ SEEDWORLD.COMSEPTEMBER 2025'