About the Authors
Lead Contributors
Walter Suza: Walter P. Suza is the George Washington Carver Endowed Chair and an Adjunct Associate Professor at Iowa State University. His research explores the metabolism and physiology of plant sterols, and he teaches courses on Genetics and Crop Physiology in the Department of Agronomy. In addition to co-developing courses for ISU’s Distance Master’s in Plant Breeding Program, he served for eight years as the director of Plant Breeding E-Learning in Africa (PBEA), expanding access to open educational resources on crop genetic improvement. In 2024, he received the World Food Prize Top Agri-Food Pioneer Award. Suza has worked in central and southern Africa, including with the World Food Programme in Angola and the United Nations Children’s Fund in Zimbabwe, focusing on food security assessment, mapping vulnerable households, drought assessment, and coordinating food aid. He holds a Ph.D. in plant sciences, specializing in molecular physiology, from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Donald Lee: Donald Lee is a Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. For 30 years, he has taught Introductory Genetics, Crop and Weed Genetics, and Crop Genetic Engineering. His research is on detection and assessment of molecular genetic variation in crops, weeds and native plants, and development of Internet resources for teaching genetics to a wide variety of learners.
Contributors
Marjorie Hanneman: Hanneman received her Bachelor’s of Science in Agronomy and Genetics from Iowa State University in 2021. She is currently a PhD student in Plant Breeding and Genetics at Cornell University studying biofortification of maize. Marjorie created images and illustrations and assisted with the editing of lesson content.
Philip Becraft: Iowa State University
Patricia Hain: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Deana Namuth-Covert: University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Abbey Elder: Elder is the Open Access & Scholarly Communication Librarian at Iowa State University. She supports the identification, production, and publication of open educational resources across the university, including open textbooks like Genetics, Agriculture, and Biotechnology. Abbey created select images and tables for this text, and reviewed and edited the text for accessibility.
