b'NAPB PUTS A FOCUS ON BREAKING DOWN BARRIERSThe National Association of Plant Breeders 2021virtual meeting highlighted the need to reach out andform new collaborations to advance plant breeding forthe 21st century.Marc ZienkiewiczFABIAN LEON WASborn in Bakersfield, Calif., where his parents were migrant farm workers. He grew up in Kentucky, where his chance at an American education was supposed to be his ticket away from agriculture. However, he spent his childhood summers and winter vacations visit-ing family and the farm in Guanajuato, Mexico, that his parents had to leave behind when they immigrated. It only drew him deeper into the field of plant science.Now, the 24-year-olds Chicano identity (Chicano is an identifier for people of Mexican descent born in the United States) is inextricably connected to his work as a plant breeder. He is a member of the Society for the Advancement of Chicanxs and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS) and Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources and Related Sciences (MANRRS). The Chicanx label arose through the ethnic pride of Mexican American youth in the 1960s and 1970s as a way of unifying Mestizx identity. Mestizx means mixed race between Spanish and indigenous descent, he explains. The Chicanx movement took place in the Southwest U.S. and very much affected civil rights, education, and labour policies in the countryall with deep implications for agriculture.There do exist barriers to Chicanxs and Native Americans in my scientific discipline. There are obviously the issues of systemic racism, historic exclusion, forcible removal from land, and erasure of their agri-cultural practices. There are stereotypical notions that brown people are only on the bottom rungs of the agribusiness ladder, he says. Selected as a National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB) Borlaug Scholar this year, Leon attended this years NAPB virtual meeting, where he was able to participate in a wider dialogue about facilitating partner-ships within the plant breeding discipline. The meeting was hosted by Cornell University and took place Aug. 15-19.Growing up, I could always tell my parents were proud agricultural-ists. I took up their pride and as early as middle school, I knew that I wanted to be involved in farming. I signed up for agriculture classes and started doing ag-related extracurriculars before my mom could convince me to be a doctor or a lawyer, he says. He is now pursuing a M.S. in plant breeding at Texas A&M University working with sorghum. 46GERMINATION.CANOVEMBER 2021'