The 2026 Plant Breeding Field Day, held Wednesday, Aug. 19, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., brought together more than 35 students, faculty and researchers to explore advances in maize and perennial groundcover research at Iowa State University. The event featured field demonstrations and presentations from the labs of Dr. Jode Edwards and Dr. Shuizhang Fei.
Following a welcome from Field Day Planning Committee Co-chair Ryanne Rinaldi, attendees began the morning in the maize nursery, where Dr. Edwards shared insights into maize breeding. He discussed his team’s efforts to calibrate and validate maize hybrid parameters for use in crop growth models to better reproduce genotype × environment interactions. Edwards also showcased historical and modern maize hybrids to highlight key morphological changes over time. The stop concluded with a demonstration of inbreds and hybrids from cycle zero to cycle 17 of reciprocal recurrent selection, accompanied by discussion of heterosis and hybrid breeding.
At the next stop, Dr. Fei and graduate students Cameron Krumm and Vipul Kumar highlighted their work on perennial groundcover systems (PGCs) through the RegenPGC project.
Source : iastate.edu