Corn Graduate Students

The products of this program are improved and diverse corn inbred lines, varieties as well as trained breeders. There have been serious losses of applied plant breeders at universities to educate and train future plant breeders, especially in corn. The availability of applied corn breeders will be essential to meet the future demands of the rapid expansion of the industry, especially in the northern Corn Belt.

Graduate Students and Visiting Scientists

• Clarissa Barata (Brasil) MS Graduate, currently at Monsanto Trait Integration, IL
• Alyson Hyrkas (USA) MS Graduate, currently soybean scientist at USDA IL
• McDonald Jumbo (Malawi) MS Graduate, currently Ph.D. student at U. of Delaware
• Marcelo Melani (Argentina) MS/Ph.D. graduate, currently NDSU Visiting Scientist
• Juan Osorno (Colombia) Ph.D. graduate, currently NDSU Assistant Professor
• Bahadir Sezegen (Turkey) MS graduate
• Colins Eno (Cameroon) MS student
• Junyun Yang  (USA) Ph.D. student (accepted)
• Dalitso Yabwalo (Malawi) MS student (accepted)
• Fernanda B. da Silva (Brasil) Visiting Scientist (2003-2004)
• Xihua Zhang (China) Visitng Scientist (2005-2006)

Theses and Dissertations

• Bahadir Sezegen, M.S. 2007. Divergent Recurrent Selection for Cold Tolerance in two Improved Maize Populations.
• Juan Osorno, Ph.D. 2007. Grain Quality Genetic Relationships among U.S. Northern Public Maize Germplasm.
• Marcelo Melani, Ph.D. 2006. Quantitative Trait Loci for Resistance to Eyespot in Maize.
• McDonald Jumbo, MS, 2006. Evaluation of Elite Maize Population and Single-Cross Hybrids across North Dakota Environments.
• Clarissa de Souza Barata, M.S. 2004. Simple Sequence Repeat Polymorphisms and Heterotic Relationships among Early Maize Inbred Lines.
• Marcelo Melani, MS. 2004. Identification of Alternative Maize Heterotic Patterns for the Northern Corn Belt.
• Alyson Hyrkas, M.S. 2003. Response to Selection in Early Maize Synthetic Varieties.