Indiana leads the nation in popcorn production, but many don’t realize the global footprint of the industry is anchored in West Lafayette. Founded nearly nine decades ago to bring university research to commercial fields, Ag Alumni Seed maintains a unique nonprofit partnership with Purdue University.
“Back in 1938, and that’s when hybridization was coming in corn, and Purdue was also very active in soybeans, wheat, oats, and other crops, and really needed a foundation seed company to help them commercialize some of the innovation that was coming out of Purdue,” explains CEO Craig Anderson. “And so Ag Alumni Seed was formed as a foundation seed company, and it was really directly charged with helping to commercialize Purdue innovation in agriculture. And that continues to this day.”
That mission expanded in the 1990s when Ag Alumni Seed took over Purdue’s popcorn breeding program. Today, that collaboration spans agronomy, food science, and cutting-edge imaging at Purdue’s phenotyping facility. Anderson says combining that research with artificial intelligence is finally allowing breeders to make sense of decades of field data.
“I think that the space where agriculture will be best served is really starting to get more accurate data collected, but then actually being able to analyze that data against the objectives. And it wasn’t possible before. There just wasn’t enough data computational capacity to get that job done in a real meaningful way. And I’m starting to see that happen, and I think that’s really exciting for agriculture.”
Anderson says that bridging academic research with commercial grower needs ensures Indiana continues setting the pace in the global specialty crop market. Hear more of the conversation with Anderson in the Agbioscience podcast from AgriNovus Indiana below or at hoosieragtoday.com.
