Agronomy professor honored by Crop Science Society of America

he Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) has announced that Purdue professor Jianxin Ma is its 2021 Fellow Award Recipient. The annual award recognizes outstanding contributions to crop science through education, national and international service and research.

Ma, a professor in the Department of Agronomy and Center for Plant Biology, received a B.S. from Laiyang Agricultural University and a M.S. and Ph.D. from Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences. He has received international recognition for his innovative research on plant comparative genomics and soybean genetics. He has authored 99 publications in high-impact journals including Science, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Genetics and Nature Plants, and delivered over 100 presentations. He is the primary inventor of three patents and patent applications.

Ma has also provided extensive service to the scientific communities and CSSA as an associate editor for several journals including the Plant Genome and the Plant Journal. He was elected as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Fellow in 2018.

Purdue Agronomy department head and professor Ron Turco praised Ma’s contributions to the field of crop science.

“Dr. Jianxin Ma has made significant contributions to our understanding of the soybean, including groundbreaking work on how it interacts with its symbiont Rhizobium and creating novel approaches to how the soybean can be modified to develop resistance to the pathogen Phytophthora. This award honors his scientific contributions to our understanding of plant sciences in general and to our understanding of soybean, a plant critical to U.S. agriculture.”

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