Department of Plant Biology

Plant Biology News

Stephen Long recognized as 2025 World Food Prize Top Agri-Food Pioneer

Stephen Long, Ikenberry Endowed Chair Emeritus of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has been selected as a...

a side by side photo of James O'Dwyer on the left and Mark Lara on the right

Plant Biology faculty honored with prestigious campus awards

The School of Integrative Biology proudly congratulates two outstanding faculty members in the Department of Plant Biology. Dr. James O’Dwyer has been recognized with the 2025 Campus Distinguished Promotion Award and...

Carl Bernacchi, Stephen Long and Donald Ort headshots.

Review: Heat-resilient crops are within reach — given enough time and money

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Laboratory and field experiments have repeatedly shown that modifying the process of photosynthesis or the physical characteristics of plants can make crops more resilient to hotter temperatures. Scientists can now alter the abundance or orientation of leaves, change leaf...

Report: ‘Future-proofing’ crops will require urgent, consistent effort

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In a review in The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Stephen Long, a professor of crop sciences and of...

Plant Biology Associate Professor Amy Marshall Colon wins ASPB Award for Excellence in Education

The American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) has honored Dr. Amy Marshall-Colón, Associate Professor of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, with the 2025...

Andrew Leakey standing in front of a designed background

New approach makes AI adaptable for computer vision in crop breeding

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists developed a machine-learning tool that can teach itself, with minimal external guidance, to differentiate between aerial images of flowering and nonflowering grasses — an advance that will greatly increase the pace of agricultural field research, they say. The work was...

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