This fall’s Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Series will begin with a lecture by Harkamal Walia, “Improving Heat Resilience in Cereals,” at 3:30 p.m. Sept. 6 in Keim Hall, Room 150. Refreshments will be served at 3 p.m.

Walia, a faculty fellow in the Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute, will discuss how higher global temperatures during cropping seasons are resulting in yield losses. He will also explain the physiological and molecular basis of these yield losses in two major cereals, wheat and rice. Creating higher temperature resilience of these two crops, which collectively account for more than 50% of human caloric needs, is essential for sustaining future food production.

Other lectures in the series include:

Sept. 13: “Integrating Design, Analytics, and Genomics in Crop Improvement” — Jianming Yu, professor and Pioneer Distinguished Chair in Maize Breeding, Department of Agronomy, Iowa State University

Sept. 20: “Pollinator health and conservation efforts in Nebraska” — Judy Wu-Smart, assistant professor and extension specialist, Department of Entomology, Nebraska Bee Lab, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Sept. 27: “Regenerative Agriculture – from the Soil to the Table” — Joseph and Matthew Brugger, Upstream Farms; Steve Tucker, AgriForce Seed; Katie Kreuser and Ben McShane-Jewell, moderators

Oct. 4: “Río de la Plata grasslands - a South American tallgrass prairie? Floristic and ecological similarities and management implications” — Biance Ott Andrade, postdoctoral research associate, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Oct. 11: “Why Diversity Matters: From disease management to the next big scientific breakthrough” — Sydney Everhart, associate professor and quantitative ecologist, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Oct. 25: “A Multiomic Approach at the Single Cell Level to Better Understand the Transcriptional Regulation of Plant Genes” — Marc Libault, associate professor, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Nov. 1: “The biogeochemistry of a fertilized landscape: Are Nebraska rivers and streams pipes or processes of nutrients?” — Jessica Corman, assistant professor, School of Natural Resources, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Nov. 8: “Connecting with growers through a peer-to-peer, experiential program titled TAPS” — Daran Rudnick, assistant professor and irrigation management specialist, Biological Systems Engineering, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Nov. 15: “Understand maize productivity and adaptation via Omics data modeling” — Jinliang Yang, assistant professor, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Nov. 22: “Metabolic Modeling and ‘Omics’ Data Integration in the Context of Plant Systems Biology” — Rajib Saha, assistant professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

Dec. 6: “Rangeland Research in Western Nebraska” — Mitch Stephenson, assistant professor and range management specialist, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln

The seminars are free and open to the public. Learn more about the series here.