University Program Empowers Students with Practical Plant Breeding Experience
An overview graphic of the SCOPE project. | UC Davis Plant Breeding Center
In a teaching greenhouse at the University of California, Davis, a group of students is working with zinnias they bred themselves — and named themselves. The Shirley, for example, comes in vivid and pastel shades and boasts a longer life in a vase and better resistance to disease.
These students are members of the Student Collaborative Organic Plant Breeding Education (SCOPE), a student-led collaborative that offers hands-on training in the science of breeding. It’s guided by faculty and staff in the Department of Plant Sciences, working with local organic growers on improving crop varieties for organic farming systems in California.
By naming the zinnias in the participatory training, SCOPE students have a larger sense of ownership over their projects.
“We wanted to have a theme for our crop. A lot of our grandmothers helped inspire us to garden, and they’re really into flower farming,” says SCOPE Coordinator Laura Roser. “We were inspired by grandmothers’ names; all of our students brainstormed a bunch of names, and then we picked out different ones.”
The SCOPE project offers internship credits and paid positions for current students at UC Davis through the Student Farm and at affiliated campuses. Volunteer opportunities are also available for graduate students, including as a breeding project team lead.
SCOPE’s work is funded almost entirely by the USDA. The project is currently operating on a three-year, $2 million USDA grant under the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative. However, the project’s funding is in danger, with the grant expiring in August.
How Plant Breeding Supports Organic Farmers
The organic plant breeding project was developed in 2015 in direct response to feedback from California’s organic growers about a scarcity of seeds for cultivars that meet the needs of organic farming.
“We started the project a few years ago because farmers had very clear and specific breeding goals for zinnias,” says Roser.
Unlike tomatoes, which are self-pollinators, zinnias are an “outcrossing crop” — where pollen is moved between different plants — which created a new challenge and learning opportunity for SCOPE students.
“We had to figure out how to do isolated insect pollination at a small scale, which means buying flies and putting them in cages to pollinate the flowers,” says Roser, “which is very common in breeding programs.”
Using traditional, field-based plant breeding methods, the new varieties are being developed on certified organic land at the Student Farm at UC Davis.
Plant Breeding Trials Across California
SCOPE coordinates additional plant breeding trials at Cal Poly Pomona and UC Santa Cruz to breed for the hotter, drier conditions of Southern California and the cooler, wetter conditions of the coast.
Fourth-year student Emily Chung is one of the lead student breeders. She joined SCOPE in 2024 after working as a Market Garden intern at the UC Davis Student Farm.
“Plant breeding is something I’ve never done before, so I came to SCOPE to learn that and see more research perspectives in agriculture,” says Chung.
The breeding objectives of SCOPE projects are based on input from local organic farmers and the Organic Seed Alliance, as well as the diversity of their cropping systems and growing seasons.
As part of her responsibilities, Chung coordinates seed and plant trials with local and out-of-state farmers. She quickly learned how to communicate with a workforce that’s “not always with their laptop” and to better understand “what their difficulties are and how to communicate with them more efficiently and effectively.”
Chung also learned how to troubleshoot plant breeding tactics, including whether plants needed caging or “how to crossbreed tomatoes by collecting pollen and rubbing it onto the male flower,” she explained.
“I learned things at SCOPE that I wouldn’t be able to learn in another place,” she said.
For additional information on SCOPE goals for students, including future plans for organic plant breeding projects, read the full article from José Vadi on the UC Davis website.
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