On November 12^th, 2018 we had a guest lecture from Dave Mayonado. He gave a guest lecture on Industry and Academia in Agriculture. He started out the lecture by talking about technology in Agriculture. This started out with him talking about in the past when we used animals to pull plows and did things by hand. He also mentioned how the entire family was involved in farming. The first thing to cause a change was Land Grant Universities which established land-grant colleges to focus on the teaching of agriculture, science, military science, and engineering. From this we had more acts created that focuses on research in the agriculture field. This has led to an increase in US crop production via improved agronomic practices and the adoption of new tools. Dave also mentioned some examples of biological tools. This included CRISPR and GMOs. CRISPR is a gene editing tool that allows us to change the genes of a crop plant to be more drought or pest resistant. This allows for the crop to have a higher yield when faced with a drought since it can tolerate less rainfall. After talking some more about biotechnology he talked about Monsanto.

He started out by giving information on Monsanto’s history. He talked about the founding of it back in 1901. Then cell biology research began in 1972. From this he mentioned all the seed brands that they have. He also gave stats about the business. He also mentioned that Monsanto is a company that gets work done fast. He mentioned that they have been adjusting to the way things are now that Bayer has purchased Monsanto. He also mentioned new opportunities that will be available since Monsanto and Bayer cover different parts of the industry. Overall it was a very informative lecture. Thank you Dave Mayonado for being our guest lecturer and talking about the biotechnology industry in Agriculture.