About the Authors

Lead Contributors 

Walter Suza: Suza is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Iowa State University. He teaches courses on Genetics and Crop Physiology in the Department of Agronomy. In addition to co-developing courses for the ISU Distance MS in Plant Breeding Program, Suza also served as the director of Plant Breeding e-Learning in Africa Program ​(PBEA) for 8 years. With PBEA, Suza helped provide access to open educational resources on topics related to the genetic improvement of crops. His research is on the metabolism and physiology of plant sterols. Suza holds a Ph.D. in the plant sciences area (with emphasis in molecular physiology) from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Donald Lee: 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.