Welcome back to the Porpo's Almanac. Today we dive into the fascinating world of plant genomics and crop improvement with a distinguished

researcher at the intersection of bioinformatics and agriculture. We're excited to talk with Dr. Stephen

Cannon, a collaborator, associate professor in the agronomy department and research geneticist

with the USDA Agricultural Research Service. Steve's worked heavily in bioinformatics for crop domestication improvement with a focus on

soybean and other unique crop legumes, including peanuts, as well as ground nuts.

One of the unique areas that Dr. Cannon has worked is with continuing the work of Dr. Bill

Blackman, who you may know from the

LSU Research Project. When he left the program, the research continued on at Iowa State

University where Dr. Cannon picked up the torch. We chat about the ground nut and its future,

as well as why research stopped on the ground nut and where it should be

going today. So tune in and let us know what you think.

Dr. Cannon, thanks so much for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit about your background

and how you ended up, I guess, specializing in legumes. Well, I guess my first exposure to them would have been, like many of us, you know, eating

them as a kid.

And then I was also a gardener as a child working with my grandfather.

And then in high school and college, I maintained a garden and helped feed our family that way.

Then much later, I went back to school in my mid-30s, got a PhD in plant biology,

ended up working on the sequencing project for the first legume to be sequenced.

That's one that we don't eat.

It's a relative of alfalfa, but it's used as a model species.

And since then, I was hired by the USDA to manage genetic data for plant breeding,

focusing on this group of species, legumes.

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