Raymond F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding

Center Facilities

The Raymond F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding, an affiliation of the Plant Sciences Institute, is committed to the mission of the land-grant institution. It is a public sector breeding operation, responding to the needs of the people of Iowa. The Center works to develop and preserve elite germplasm and advocates its fair and public use for farmers, as well as public and private breeders.

The Center’s members have offices and lab space in Agronomy Hall on the campus of Iowa State University. In addition, facilities for cultivation, drying, and seed processing are housed at the Agronomy and Curtiss farms in Ames. Members also extensively use outlying research farms managed by the College of Agriculture for test plots and planting. Many of the Center’s constituents rent or lease crop land from Iowa farmers for plot work.

The Raymond F. Baker Center for Plant Breeding members are full-time state employees who have primary faculty appointments in the Agronomy Department and who conduct active breeding programs, advise graduate students majoring in plant breeding, and teach courses related to the plant breeding major.