AMES, Iowa -- An agronomy professor recently joined Iowa State University to specialize in corn breeding.
Jianming Yu, a former associate professor at Kansas State University, joined Iowa State's Department of Agronomy Jan. 1. DuPont Pioneer provided the funding for the position and Yu is serving as the Pioneer Distinguished Chair in Maize Breeding.
"Dr. Yu is an outstanding addition to our faculty in agronomy. He is one of the top quantitative geneticists in the world and we are looking forward to the contributions that he will continue to make to public and private plant breeding programs," said Kendall Lamkey, chair of the agronomy department.
Yu's appointment is 70 percent research and 30 percent teaching. He will work with both undergraduate and graduate education in agronomy and as a faculty member in the plant-breeding major.
He previously worked at Kansas State, studying plant-breeding methods, quantitative genetics and genomics. Yu earned a bachelor's degree in agronomy at Northwestern Agricultural University in China, master's degree in plant breeding and genetics from Kansas State and a doctorate in plant breeding and genetics from the University of Minnesota.
In 2010, he was presented the Young Crop Scientist Award by the Crop Science Society of America.