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James Brewbaker

Veteran University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa plant breeder and corn expert James Brewbaker has been selected to receive the Crop Science Society of America Presidential Award. Brewbaker is a member of the Department of Tropical Plant and Soil Science in the College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources.

The Crop Science Society of America Presidential Award recognizes outstanding contributions to crop science through education, national and international service, and research.

For more than 60 years, Brewbaker has developed new varieties of crops for improved nutrition, yields, and pest and disease resistance. Recruited by UH Mānoa’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources to establish a sweet corn improvement program, he was instrumental in developing the seed corn industry into the state’s most lucrative agricultural crop. He has also done extensive work on tropical legume trees, and he established Hawaiʻi Foundation Seeds to manage parent seed stocks. Nearly half his graduate students have become agronomists or foresters.

Brewbaker has authored more than 280 publications (including Agricultural Genetics, which was translated into seven languages) and regularly sends his Dr. B Newsletter to dozens of former students, postdocs and colleagues.

An American Society of Agronomy fellow, he is a founding member and fellow of Crop Science Society of America and recipient of its Crop Science Research, DeKab Distinguished Career and Seed Science awards. His many other honors include the 2010 National Association of Plant Breeders inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award.

Read the UH Mānoa news release for more.

More about the Crop Science Society of America

The Crop Science Society of America is a more than 6,000 member international scientific society founded in 1955 and headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. Members advance the discipline by acquiring and disseminating information about crop breeding and genetics; crop physiology; crop ecology, management and quality; seed physiology, production and technology; turfgrass science; forage and grazing lands; genomics, molecular genetics and biotechnology; and biomedical and enhanced plants.

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