Remembering and grateful for the teachers and mentors who shaped me. And also thankful for my trainees, past and present, some of whom introduced me to a day set aside honor those same guides. Happy Guru Purnima!

Check out the impact of the post-pandemic surge in review paper publications. Visualization of the citation histories of seventeen plant science faculty.

Just had one of those great professor moments where I needed to explain something and had the perfect ear of corn to show what I was talking about right at hand.

The days that make me appreciate living in Lincoln Nebraska.

It's finally happening! After multiple rainouts and a redesign of our whole planting workflow, our nearly 1,000 line sorghum diversity panel in going into the ground today. Big thank you to Chidu, Kyle, Jon and the UNL Agronomy farm crew.

For the first time as a prof, I’m mentoring students aiming for faculty jobs in India. I understand which factors matter the most for US and Chinese faculty hiring—but can anyone help me figure out what we should be emphasizing to be competitive at Indian universities?

Protecting against downside risk doesn’t have to come at the expense of continued increases in the yield potential. No evidence of a tradeoff between yield stability and maximum yield in an analysis of hybrid performance across 34 environments. New pub led by @jensinadavis.bsky.social

National Science Foundation's forecast for how many fewer scientists, postdocs, and graduate students we'll be able to support in 2026.

Did anyone else get a "we've been asked to pause issuance of grant funding during the transition of government" e-mail from USDA-NIFA this morning?

Just had a no cost extension request denied with only 14 days before grant funds expire. If you've been waiting months to hear back don't assume it's just the government being slow to process things and everything will ultimately work out.

Paper came back from review after seven months. The editor (not the reviewers) tells me: 1) Redo the GWAS using a different statistical model in a different software package. 2) Add a brand new RNA-seq experiment and results. 3) Please submit your revised manuscript within 14 days. 🤷

In January of 2023 Waqar Ali arrived in Lincoln with no coding background (and no winter coat). Today he published a paper using GWAS to identify genes linked to variation in how corn photosynthesizes, complete with reverse genetics validation in arabidopsis. doi.org/10.1093/jxb/...

This seems like a shockingly large effect size unless "professionally edited" is confounded with a bunch of other variables that would have a big impact on paper acceptance rates with or without the editing.

Still get excited each time I see a Waymo.

🧬🌾📊🔍 RESEARCH 🔍 📊🌾🧬 'Unveiling shared genetic regulators of plant architectural and biomass yield traits in the Sorghum Association Panel' - Singh et al. doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... @szintri.bsky.social #PlantScience 🧪

Students say they’ll keep working on papers after graduation. I tell them I'll understand when (not if) they don’t. Life happens. But there are exceptions. Ramesh left my lab nearly a year ago, but kept pushing. His 1st thesis chapter was just published. bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

I helped launch and run a startup commercializing technology that could identify the fields where more fertilizer wouldn't increase crop productivity and save farmers money. SBIR funding from NSF is how we made the leap from concept to product and acquisition.

Preparing 50 trays with 4,800 slots for our first large-scale sampling effort

Grateful to work at a university that has on campus cornfields. Greenhouses and growth chamber are good and all. But sometimes need something more. Our lab will be planting our first proper summer corn nursery since 2021 this year.

I'm two decades late but really entertained by the term "mFruits."

Mapping QTL is domesticated cheese molds.

Generic bitter melon vs Indian bitter melon…

Spring in Nebraska. Highly recommended.

Frank's an outstanding scientist and he's assembled a really cool team at Bonn. Definitely check this out.

The folks in the lab are calling this one "Christmas Tree sorghum." (Photo by Kyle Linders)

Current students and the students of one of my former trainees (Ravi Mural) together at ASPB midwest. If I'm still professor-ing a decade from now perhaps I'll be meeting and working with some of the students trained or scientists mentored by the folks in this photo.

ज़िंदगी छोटी भी है और अनमोल भी — इसे महसूस करो, इसे चाहो, इसे ज़ाया मत होने दो।

Gorgeous end to a productive snow day.

I take my responsibilities as an advisor and mentor seriously. But, sometimes, advisors need positive feedback too.

The biggest impact I'll ever have as a professor is the people I help train. Felt wonderful to see so many current trainees and lab alumni together in one place this past weekend at the 2025 Maize Genetics conference.

Ed Buckler awarded the 2025 McClintock Prize in absentia. Two thirds of the room standing by the end of “if you were trained by Ed, stand up. If you were trained by one of those people, stand up. If Ed’s work has shaped your career, stand up.”

"Don't worry about papers. There will always be more papers." Jianming Yu on 3D reaction norms to understand the functions of individual genes and how crops will perform in future, unobserved environments. Great plenary!

Found a 1940s era video from the Nebraska maize genetics/corn breeding program in the university archives.

Find yourself* graduate students who will stand up and tell you when you need to tone down an angry sounding comment in a reason to reviewers document. *Actually train them. A lot of this is making sure the people you mentor feel safe telling their advisor: "You're making a mistake."

Twenty year startup.

Had the honor of introducing my colleague, collaborator, and friend, Prof. Jinliang Yang, at the seminar marking his appointment as the next Gardner Endowed Professor of Quantitative Genetics. We are extremely fortunate to have Jinliang on the faculty here at the University of Nebraska.

To US colleagues who have lost or are in imminent danger of losing their jobs: please DM whether we can accommodate your research.

If I wanted to support a graduate student research assistant stipend in Mexico, Brazil, or India what are reasonable amounts of money to budget? Here (Nebraska/USA) a PhD GRA receives $28,000/year but total cost is $63,400/yr (includes tuition, health, indirect).

Regenerating (non-transgenic) maize plants from tissue culture. Currently on rooting media 35 days after beginning the culturing process. (Work by Caner Yavuz, Chidanand Ullagaddi, and Kyle Linders).

I'm both laughing and hurt. Teaching a student how to draft a response to reviewers for a paper. Student: "I learned a GRE vocabulary word to describe what you're doing here. You're being obsequious."

National Science Foundation staff warned of 25-50% layoffs. NSF funds many basic plant/crop science projects with Broader Impacts on grower profitability, agricultural resilience, and economic security. www.politico.com/news/2025/02...

Does anyone have recent experience hiring new graduate students from India and the current wait time for visa interviews? Last time I brought someone over it took almost six months but that was back in 2023.

Names are weird: If you seed aphids attacking a sorghum plants they are probably "sugar cane aphids". And the pathogen that causes common rust in corn (and doesn't attack sorghum) is called Puccinia sorghi.

The moment between when I finish tuning my guitar and when I start trying to PLAY my guitar is the closest I'll ever get to feeling like a guitar player.

Just FYI if you've submitted a grant to NSF it may have been reviewed by a 13 year old

Was digging through @mcstitzer.bsky.social 's awesome pan-andropogoneae genomes website and saw an unexpected old friend: teosinte genomes all compared to Paspalum vaginatum genome as the outgroup for studying the maize WGD. Cool! mcstitzer.github.io/panand_assem...

Always, always spend the extra hour to check if genotype names which don't match between data sources can be explained by simply differences in formatting. You'll frequently save datapoints that cost $10,000s and weeks of people's lives to generate.

Is SciEnCV down for anyone else? Was working on my biosketch and current/pending when I suddenly got this error.

Sometimes corn gets confused. Honestly I don't remember if this was a tassel that decided it was actually an ear or an ear that decided it was a tassel. Either way it worked out.