150 Points of Pride

The Iowa State University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences has a proud and distinguished history. As part of Iowa State's sesquicentennial celebration, 150 points of pride related to the College - accomplishments, discoveries, contributions, highlights, famous and interesting people - will be posted here. These postings will coincide with 150 days of the 2007-2008 academic year, beginning Aug. 20, 2007 and ending May 2, 2008, with time off for the Thanksgiving, winter and spring breaks. Check back each Monday for five new items.

Plant transformation

Iowa State University is home to one of the first publicly funded and operated plant genetic transformation facilities. Plant transformation involves transferring DNA into plant cells. The facility provides expertise and service in maize, rice and soybean transformation; works to improve transformation technologies; and trains scientists and students. Its clients are primarily academic researchers. The facility started in 1995 with three full-time employees focusing on biolistic-mediated maize transformation. Today it employs eight full-time employees, two postdoctoral research associates, a visiting scholar, five doctoral graduate students and nine student hourly workers. The Plant Transformation Facility was established with funding from the ISU Agronomy Endowment fund and support from the Agricultural Experiment Station, the ISU Biotechnology Council, the Iowa Corn Promotion Board and the Iowa Soybean Promotion Board.

Fast fact: More than 80 percent of the requests received by the facility in 2006 were related to maize.

Seed Science Center

Louis Pammel established the first seed-testing laboratory in the nation at Iowa State University in 1895. The laboratory has grown to be one of the largest public seed-testing laboratories in the world, performing more than 40,000 tests on more than 300 species annually. The laboratory also conducts seed health tests for over 250 seed pathogens. In addition to seed testing, the Seed Science Center facilitates interdepartmental graduate work in seeds in collaboration with Agronomy, Plant Pathology, Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Horticulture and other departments. The Center conducted programs in 75 countries during the last 12 years on seed policies and regulations. Manjit Misra is the current director of the Center.

Fast fact: The Seed Science Center is responsible for the administration of the National Seed Health System which sets standards for seed health testing.

Soybean's introduction to Iowa

Iowa State’s long tradition of soybean breeding began in the 1930s when F.S. Wilkins promoted the use of soybeans as both a forage and grain crop. The Department of Agronomy built the grain into an ongoing four-year rotation at the Agronomy Farm in 1938 with corn, oats and legume meadow. USDA scientists C. R. (Bob) Weber and Martin Weiss were stationed on the ISU campus in the early 1940s to produce better cultivars of soybeans by hybridization. ‘Hawkeye’ was their first cultivar and was distributed in 1948. Releases by Weber and his students and his research on soybean management carried production of the crop in Iowa well into the 1980s when cultivar development rapidly moved into private industry. Walter Fehr, a student of Weber’s, and Silvia Cianzio have carried on the soybean-breeding program since 1967.

Fast fact: The Iowa State University Research Foundation holds the patent for the one percent linolenic acid soybean, which is used to create oil containing zero trans fats. The oil is the product of decades of research conducted by Walter Fehr, Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor in Agriculture and Life Sciences, and Earl Hammond, emeritus University Professor of food science. By 2004, farmers had planted about 30,000 acres of 1% linolenic soybean varieties.

Soil Survey

The USDA Bureau of Soils began the U.S. soil survey program in 1899. A cooperative agreement was signed with the Iowa Agricultural Experiment Station to conduct Iowa soil surveys in 1913 drawing in faculty from the ISU Agronomy Department. The original soil survey of most Iowa counties was complete in 1941. The surveys were used to aid in valuation of agricultural land for tax purposes beginning in 1949. In 1977 valuation of agricultural land for tax purposes was changed to 100% productivity and earning capacity, which meant the soil survey was used as the primary source of information. The Iowa Cooperative Soil Survey (ICSS) was formed in 1966 as a partnership among the Extension and the Experiment Station at Iowa State University, State Soil Conservation Committee, (now the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, Division of Soil Conservation) and the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service. The purpose of the ICSS is to coordinate the collection, compilation, interpretation, publication, dissemination and use of soil surveys in Iowa. The modern soil survey of Iowa was completed under the ISU leadership of John Pesek and John Mahlstede, administrators, Frank Riecken and Thomas Fenton, project leaders, and Minoru Amemiya and Gerald Miller, soil survey educational program.

Fast fact: Iowa's newest interactive, digital soil surveys were created using GIS technology in 2005.

Robert H. Shaw

Robert Shaw played a major part in establishing agricultural meteorology as a recognized field. In 1945 the ISU Agronomy Department started a program in agricultural climatology under the direction of Herb S. Thom, the state climatologist and meteorologist-in-charge of the U.S. Weather Bureau office in Des Moines. Robert Shaw was among his first students. Shaw received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in plant physiology from Iowa State in 1941 and 1942, respectively. He joined the agronomy department in 1946 as a research associate and instructor and earned his doctorate in agricultural climatology with a minor in soil physics in 1949. Shaw moved through the ranks to full professor of climatology and soils by 1957. He is known for starting a system for collecting data about soil moisture and its relation to the production of agricultural crops. As his career progressed, Shaw focused on water stress on corn, eventually developing the stress index for corn and the statewide soil moisture status report. Shaw was named a Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor in Agriculture in 1980 and retired a distinguished professor emeritus in 1986.

Fast fact: Shaw and his colleagues were some of the first in the nation to scientifically evaluate the effect of weather factors on crop production.

*Some historic photographs courtesy of the University Archives.

150 Points of Pride Archives