Marcelo Carena is looking for a few good field men and women. Carena, director of corn breeding and genetics and an associate professor at North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo, N.D., says there's a need for students interested in working in the field to keep up the important task of developing new corn hybrids. "Right now, the industry is concerned with the lack of genetic, statistics, and breeding backgrounds since most students are lab oriented," he tells EPM.

The breeding program at NDSU is one of the few in the country that bases its work primarily on work in the field. That gives students a chance to actually apply the concepts they learn in the laboratory. "We are training the next generation of breeders," he says.

NDSU's 75-year-old breeding program develops and releases corn inbred varieties that are used by seed companies to develop and sell hybrids that have traits desired by the farmers who grow corn. Corn breeders, with the help of graduate students, screen for traits like drought-tolerance, cold-tolerance, early maturing lines and higher starch extractability—all of which are desirable for corn grown in North Dakota for ethanol production.

Ted Crosbie, global breeding leader for Monsanto, says it is an exciting time for the plant-breeding industry. "We think the advances being made in plant breeding as a result of genome sequencing and molecular markers will create both the opportunity and the need for training additional students in the near future," he says, adding that students need to have field and laboratory training, as well as be comfortable with data analysis and computers.

At Iowa State University (ISU), Kendall Lamkey, interim chair of the department of agronomy and director of the Baker Center for Plant Breeding, also recognizes the general shortage of students going into field-based plant breeding and having laboratory experience. Every year, he fields calls from companies searching for more graduating students, especially those with doctorate degrees. "My last student had a job six or seven months before he finished." Lamkey says. "The one before him had a job 13 months before he finished. We've never graduated a PhD. with plant breeding that hasn't left here without a job."

Beyond plant breeding, Lamkey sees a shortage of students going into the agricultural field in general. Students who graduate from ISU's College of Agriculture with bachelor of science degrees typically have a 99 percent job placement rate. "The demand for people trained in agriculture is very high," he says.

Recruiting students for agriculture studies in general, as well as plant breeding, is particularly important right now. There will be a persistent need for agriculture graduates with the growth of the current biofuels industry and the future cellulosic ethanol industry. Lamkey's fear is that there simply won't be enough people in place to do the needed research to make biofuels work from an agricultural perspective. "I think that's going to have an impact on the bioeconomy that many of these Midwestern states want to push toward," he says.

Research funding is also an issue that concerns both Carena and Lamkey. There's been a continued decline in funding for agricultural research over the years, Lamkey says. The shortage of research funds has made it difficult for schools like ISU and NDSU to recruit additional students and conduct research.