This Cornell professor says his greatest accomplishment isn’t a variety or a publication. It’s the next generation of scientists who will carry the work forward.
Ask Dr. Mark Sorrells what he’s most proud of after more than four decades in plant breeding, and he won’t mention a wheat variety. He’ll talk about students.
The Cornell University professor and 2025 National Association for Plant Breeding Lifetime Achievement Award recipient has spent a career improving small grains that feed millions of people around the world. His work spans wheat, oats, barley, rye, triticale and ancient grains, but mentorship is what immediately rises to the surface when he reflects on his legacy.
“The thing that I find most rewarding and really appreciate is being able to train young scientists to be successful plant breeders and contribute to feeding the world,” Sorrells says.
That commitment to mentorship is now coming full circle.
Later this year, Sorrells will retire from Cornell. The person stepping into his role isn’t a stranger. That’s because she is one of his former graduate students.
“She’s one of the graduate students that I trained, and she’s coming to replace me,” he says. “She’s really an outstanding plant breeder, so things are working out great.”
He says the recognition feels symbolic of a profession built on continuity. Every generation of breeders inherits decades of knowledge from the scientists who came before them.
Sorrells has witnessed dramatic change over the course of his own career. We asked him what he sees in a wheat plant today that he couldn’t see when he started, his answer was immediate.
“The individual genes, the gene sequences, the characteristics that are revealed genetically that you can’t see visually.”
Technology is a Game Changer
Technology, he says, has fundamentally changed the profession.
“It really facilitates being able to see and understand things that you couldn’t before.”
Yet some of his work has intentionally looked backward instead of forward. Sorrells has spent years authenticating century-old heritage wheat varieties, something many breeders might never pursue. But he believes those older genetics could help solve some of agriculture’s newest challenges.
“A lot of these heritage wheat varieties were grown before the Green Revolution genes and before the Haber-Bosch nitrogen fixation reaction,” he says.
Because those varieties were developed under lower fertility conditions, they may hold valuable clues for improving nitrogen use efficiency in modern production systems.
“We would like to reduce the nitrogen requirements so we can reduce the potential for pollution.”
He says its a reminder that innovation doesn’t always mean starting from scratch. Sometimes it means rediscovering what agriculture already knew.
As he prepares for retirement, Sorrells hopes people remember one quality above all else. Collaboration. “I hope they think of me as being a good collaborator,” he says.
It’s a fitting answer from someone whose career demonstrates that plant breeding has never been an individual pursuit.
