At the National Association of Plant Breeders annual meeting, Shawn Brook, Seed World’s publisher, had the opportunity to sit down with Steve Knapp, a strawberry breeder from the University of California, Davis. During the interview, Knapp explains the differences between working as a plant breeder in the public sector and the private sector, and provides a few tips for students looking at a career in plant breeding.
Knapp, a professor and director of the strawberry breeding program in the Department of Plant Sciences, specializes in plant breeding, genetics, and genomics. He has been a professor at both Oregon State University and at the University of Georgia, Athens. Most recently, he was global director for vegetable breeding with Monsanto’s Vegetable Research and Development Program in Woodland, California, before joining the UC-Davis faculty in 2015.
