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Breeding Crops for Resilience to a Changing Climate

• When: Thursday, April 27 @ 4:30–6 p.m. (reception to follow until 8 p.m.)
• Where: Chancellor’s Hall Auditorium, Center for Academic Success & Engagement (CASE)

The rapid advance of genetic technologies has provided new tools to generate crops that are resilient to climate change, resistant to infection and can better sequester carbon. Professor Pamela Ronald (University of California, Davis) will discuss the development of climate-resilient rice varieties, the genetic basis for plant resistance and CRISPR-mediated strategies to enhance carbon sequestration of rice.

Å·ÃÀ¿Ú±¬ÊÓƵ Pamela Ronald

Pamela Ronald is a distinguished professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and the Genome Center at the University of California, Davis. She also serves as the director of Grass Genetics at the Joint BioEnergy Institute in Emeryville, CA and is a member of the Innovative Genomics Institute at the University of California, Berkeley.  

With her collaborators, she received the 2008 USDA National Research Initiative Discovery Award and the 2012 Tech Award for the innovative use of technology to benefit humanity.  

Ronald’s book, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic Farming, Genetics and the Future of Food was selected as one of the 25 most influential books with the power to inspire college readers to change the world. Her has been viewed more than 2 million times. In 2019, she received the American Society of Plant Biologists Leadership Award and an honorary doctorate from the Swedish Agricultural University. In 2020 she was named a World Agricultural Prize Laureate by the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences. In 2022-23 she was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture and the Vinfuture Prize for female innovators.  

Ronald is an elected member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry. 

About the Rose M. Litman Memorial Lecture in Science

The Litman Lecture celebrates the legacy of an exceptional scientist and educator with a lifelong passion for research, and a firm commitment to keeping rigorous inquiry at the heart of university life.