Why I am a Soybean Breeder - Katy Martin Rainey Purdue Agronomy

[Music]

My name is Katy Martin Rainey. I am
an assistant professor in the agronomy department

at Purdue University and this is why I’m
a soybean breeder. I've always been a researcher.

I was drawn to science from a young age. My
mother, my grandmothers, and my aunts all

really love horticulture. So I did become
interested in plants for that reason. Why

I got involved in the research aspect of my
position is that I love intellectual creativity

and freedom and I like complex applied challenges.
My research is soybean genetics and breeding.

I focus on economically valuable traits in
soybeans. Sometimes people will joke that

I seem to be obsessed with beans and that,
that is sort of an interesting or corky thing

to dedicate your life to. But there is so
much behind that field of soybeans in terms

of millions of data points of genomic information,
decades of elite germ plasm development, several

years sometimes worth of creation of genetic
resources to answer certain scientific questions,

not to mention the advances that we are applying
in statistical models. So it is not simply

an obsession with beans. There is a lot of
technology that you can't see that we're using.

We are trying to integrate genomic data, climatic
data, and these precision high throughput

phenotyping data. It used to be that one would
specialize in one or the other and now we

are able to integrate multiple streams of
data and have more complex objectives as a

result, but that's exciting. Right now that
is what I am really interested in, is using

multiple streams of data to predict yield,
both in a farmer's field but really I am more

interested in can I predict the yield of a
potential soybean variety.