Purdue News

June 17, 1994 New Age Ahead For Agriculture, Says New Purdue Dean WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Beyond the farm gate. That's where agriculture is, says Victor Lechtenberg, named Purdue University dean of agriculture in May. Although the importance of the farmer and the food produced on the farm will never diminish, most job opportunities are available off the farm. Economics, microbiology, environmental science, marketing, food processing and landscape architecture are some professions awaiting graduates of the School of Agriculture. One group of graduates – food science majors – has its pick of jobs. "We've had 100 percent placement of food science graduates the past eight years," Lechtenberg says. So think of row crops and animal husbandry when you think of Purdue Agriculture – because there are no microwaveable entrees without corn, wheat, cattle and hogs – but think bigger, broader. In Lechtenberg's view, schools of agriculture ought to be broad-based, ought to educate students to get jobs, ought to develop programs to match the job market. But there's more to this School of Agriculture. In the century since tractors replaced horses on farms, many of the low hurdles have been cleared: increasing yields, controlling insects and weeds that choke crops, devising feeding strategies to provide lean meat, to name a few. "Many of the gains in technology have been made," Lechtenberg says. "Now the knowledge-based strategies have to take over." One such strategy is "integrated pest management," a complicated year-round plan intended to produce high yields and at the same time reduce reliance on chemicals. The old way – applying chemicals before and during the growing season and plowing under what's left after harvest – has shown its shortcomings. The chemicals don't break down totally, sometimes ending up in streams or wells along with silt and topsoil. And insects and weeds have shown an alarming ability to evolve – to build up resistance to pesticides and herbicides. This kind of pest management is studied in the School of Agriculture, taught to students in entomology and crop management classes, and carried to farmers through Purdue Cooperative Extension Service offices throughout Indiana. Even this kind of strategy – dependent on constant study, revision and education of producers – doesn't reach the kind of complexity Lechtenberg has in mind. "The new strides will be made by unlocking the secrets of nature," he says. "The importance of fundamental research has never been greater." An example is developing crop varieties that have "built in" resistance to pests. Nature is filled with plants that repel insects, grow in arid climates or outperform weeds. But nature didn't put these traits in one strain of corn or beans or wheat. "Genetic improvement offers our best hope of developing varieties that naturally accomplish the work of chemicals," Lechtenberg says. Any characteristic exhibited by a plant – or an animal for that matter – is encoded at the cellular level in its DNA – deoxyribonucleic acid. DNA holds the secrets of heredity, and transferring these traits from plant to plant is the kind of knowledge-based strategy Lechtenberg talks about. The work combines old-fashioned plant breeding – transferring traits of one plant into the seed of another and trying to grow it to maturity. But unlocking the secrets of nature and throwing open the door to crops that exhibit all the traits desired is incredibly complex and at some point involves knitting at the cellular level – actually cutting away strands of chromosomes from a cell in one plant and splicing them into the cell of another. Before the knitting starts, scientists must isolate the chromosomes that confer the traits. Each step in the process can take thousands of tries before success is achieved. The work takes time, money, scientists, and sophisticated laboratory space and equipment. Lechtenberg says Purdue research will help change the way of things in the same way that tractors changed production agriculture when they replaced horses. "The advances being made and yet to be made will completely alter life 100 years from now," he says. For instance, he says, renewable resources from the farm field gradually will replace finite raw materials. Already Purdue researchers are working on: • Oils that one day will replace fluids and chemicals distilled from crude oil. • Improved ethanol processed from corn to replace gasoline. • Genetically modified starches, oils and proteins that can be used to produce new food products. Further, these new uses of crops and uses of new crops yet to be developed will help the farmer make a living in an era of declining agricultural subsidies. "In the future, the farmer will not only have to be competitive," he says, "the farmer will be an even more careful steward of the environment than right now and will have to produce a value-added product to command a premium price." Lechtenberg had been executive associate dean of agriculture since 1989 and since July had been interim dean while a national search was conducted to replace Robert Thompson Lechtenberg came to West Lafayette as a graduate student in 1967. He rose through the faculty ranks in the Department of Agronomy and entered administration in 1982 as associate director of agricultural research. Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu