Celebrating National Agriculture Month- Purdue University’s College of Agriculture

March is National Agriculture Month in the U.S., a time to recognize and celebrate agriculture’s impact our country and local community.

Earlier in this series of blog features, we highlighted agriculture’s impact on Indiana’s economy. Today, we feature Purdue University’s College of Agriculture.

Liane Hart, CEO and co-founder of Verility LLC, and Jeff Muegge, research manager at Blue River Research Services. Verility, a woman-owned, high-tech startup, is commercializing technology that provides rapid, low-cost and accurate assessment of livestock semen and ovulation samples. (Photo provided by Verility)

PURDUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURE

Purdue University’s College of Agriculture is one of the world’s leading colleges of agricultural, food, life, and natural resource sciences. The college is committed to leading the charge toward breakthroughs in agriculture and sustainable food production, which have opened new possibilities for the world of agriculture.

Purdue College of Agriculture is internationally renowned:

· #1 Agricultural and Biological Engineering program in the U.S.

· #7 agriculture program in the U.S.

· Three World Food Prize laureates

· Home to the most advanced phenotyping facilities at a U.S. university

· More than 30 undergraduate majors

Purdue Agriculture is fully committed to the university’s land-grant mission, which focuses on teaching, research and extension. Purdue Extension reaches all 92 Indiana counties to strengthen lives and livelihoods through research-based education year round.

Purdue University College of Agriculture

The college provides resources to farmers throughout the nation through multiple efforts and collaborations such as through the Ag Economy Barometer: a collaboration between Purdue University’s Center for Commercial Agriculture and the CME Group. The Ag Economy Barometer provides monthly nationwide measures and analysis of the health of the U.S. agricultural economy that are published the first Tuesday of every month.

OUT OF THE LAB AND INTO THE MARKETPLACE

Purdue University values commercialization of its research to provide new tools and technologies that impact the world. For many, Purdue’s global reputation translates to opportunities to take risks, explore new possibilities, and collaborate cross-functionally all within an environment rooted in innovation and world-changing research.

Anthony Hearst is chief executive officer and co-founder of Progeny Drone, a Purdue-affiliated startup that has created software that rapidly converts aerial crop photos into useful information for plant breeding, crop modeling and precision agriculture. Progeny Drone has licensed their technology through the Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization, was a member of the Purdue Foundry startup accelerator and awarded $60,000 from the Ag-Celerator Fund. (Photo provided)

In 2021, Christian Butzke, a professor of food science and wine industry entrepreneur, was named the college’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Fellow as part of a campus wide program to connect innovators with novel paths for entrepreneurship and commercialization.

“I could not be more excited about this great opportunity to share my passion for innovation and entrepreneurship with our wonderful faculty,” Butzke said in a news release. “I look forward to working with faculty and students who are interested in commercialization to take their innovations to the world.”

Butzke says risk-takers have earned the right to think: “We’re automatically vetted. We’re not a random startup. We’re coming out of the gigantic incubator that is Purdue. That gives us a head start.”

Additionally, the College of Agriculture recently named 10 faculty members as Innovation and Entrepreneurship Ambassadors “to encourage and guide members of the college interested in taking their research and innovations out of the laboratory and into the marketplace.”

The ambassadors are:

· John Couture, associate professor, Forestry and Natural Resources

· Scott Downey, professor, Agricultural Economics

· Klein E. Ileleji, professor, Agricultural and Biological Engineering

· Jian Jin, assistant professor, Agricultural and Biological Engineering

· Andrea Liceaga, associate professor, Food Sciences

· Maria Marshall, Jim and Lois Ackerman Endowed Chair in Agricultural Economics and director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development, Agricultural Economics

· Dharmendra Mishra, assistant professor, Food Sciences

· Bryan Pijanowski, professor, Forestry and Natural Resources

· Katherine Rainey, associate professor, Agronomy

· Torbert Rocheford, Patterson Endowed Chair for Translational Genomics in Crop Improvement, Agronomy

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Purdue University-affiliated startup NutraMaize is currently featured in a national advertising campaign presented by GoDaddy. Evan Rocheford, CEO of NutraMaize, appears in the campaign. (Image provided)