Chapter 6

Crop Improvement Extended Toward Crops for Health:

Goal:  Continue undergraduate education, graduate education, applied research, and outreach in genetics and breeding of cultivars for wheat, potatoes, and dry beans focusing on characteristics relevant to pest resistance and climatic conditions of Colorado.  Additionally, combine the knowledge of human nutrition and plant genetics to extend crop selection, germplasm screening, and crop improvement with the objective to build greater amounts of compounds relevant to improved human health and disease prevention into these crops and be recognized nationally and internationally as a competitive institution for competitive grants and attractive to graduate students in this topic.  Crops for Health will include graduate education and research in human nutrition, plant genetics, and plant breeding.

Strategic Initiatives: 

• Secure faculty expertise in plant biochemistry, molecular genetics, and food chemistry with interests in applying knowledge to characterizing genetic traits of plants useful to human nutrition; secure enology expertise.

• Recruit graduate students and post-doctoral fellows to support the program.

Critical Resource Growth:

• Secure substantial grant support for fundamental research linking human nutrition to the development of food crop improvement.

• Secure funds for three faculty positions, one an endowed chair in the area.