About the Authors

About Dr. Walter R. Fehr

Walter R. Fehr is an emeritus Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the highest academic honor at Iowa State University (ISU). He obtained graduate degrees in plant breeding from the University of Minnesota and Iowa State University.  From 1967 to 2018, he was a faculty member in the Department of Agronomy at ISU where he taught undergraduate and graduate plant breeding courses and conducted research specializing in soybean breeding and genetics.  He served as the major professor for 92 students who obtained MS and PhD degrees and authored 270 articles in refereed scientific journals, three books, and 11 book chapters. As a soybean breeder, he developed more than 200 cultivars and was awarded 28 US patents for development of unique genetic traits related to soybean oil quality.

About Dr. Walter P. 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.