community thinks that we need to and that is understandable. Unfortunately there is little evidence to support the need. I argue that we need to develop good solid scientific evidence to answer the question.
and local cause but it is not the global cause. Research priorities shift and funding streams shift with them. The reasons for these shifts are numerous, but funding rarely shifts away from research that is perceived to be having an impact or is actually having an impact. I contend that at least part of the funding shift from plant breeding has to do with our failure to document impact. Another part has been due to a lack of outreach associated with this impact. We need to tell people about the good things we are doing for them, because it is unlikely they will discover this on their own.
How do we identify and prioritize the traits that we select for? We need to set consistent and achievable breeding goals that matter. The more simultaneous traits that we add to our breeding goals the more time it will take to develop useful cultivars.
There has also been a fundamental shift in the way land grant universities operate. State funding is becoming a smaller piece of the funding pie at land grants. Fig. 1 shows the funding sources for Iowa State University for five academic calendar years. It is clear that state appropriations are slowly going down while tuition and contract and grants are increasing in importance. Universities have also been given economic development charges from state legislatures, which serve only to complicate the land grant mission.
Can farmers make progress selecting their own varieties on their own farms? This answer depends on how you define progress and what the expectations are. It is important for people to understand that modern cultivars have had a tremendous amount of effort put into their development.
How do we distribute seed of publicly developed cultivars?
Although the USDA-ARS has enjoyed strong funding support from congress, ARS is housed within a policy organization and research is often susceptible to shifts in public policy. This is frequently a function of the fact that plant breeders as a group have had no effective lobbying voice.
This is a crop-to-crop problem, but is particularly acute in cross-pollinated crops such as corn and alfalfa. Even if I developed a superior corn hybrid, I have no mechanism for delivering that hybrid to farmers.
We need research on developing efficient screens for the traits we want to select for.
What are the major research questions in plant breeding?
The success of a plant breeding program is directly related to how easy it is to measure a trait. We are good at yield because we have spent years developing efficient ways to measure yield
There are still many unanswered questions regarding plant improvement and I cannot itemize all of them. I would like to bring out a few of them particularly in the context of sustainable and organic agriculture. The questions below are ones that have come up as I have interacted with sustainable and organic farmers and scientists on the interface of corn breeding. Because breeding programs need continuity, efficiency, and good management to be effective answers to these questions are important to obtain.
Where does the commercial sector fit into public plant breeding? This is complicated question, particularly for those crops with a large commercial presence. There is no single answer to this question. It is important to note, however, that the failure of plant breeding programs in developing countries is most often related to the collapse of public and private seed companies. Plant breeding is utterly useless if the seed cannot be gotten to farmers - and this is the role that the private sector has fulfilled in the U.S.
Do we need to breed under low-input sustainable and/or organic conditions? Certainly the sustainable agriculture and organic
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