Perhaps it was predestined for Mitch Tuinstra ’91 to become a plant breeder. After all, his last name is Dutch Frisian for “from the garden.”

His family’s business, Tuinstra Greenhouse, began specializing in flowers and has since switched to organic herbs. Naturally, Tuinstra majored in biology when he enrolled at Calvin.

“I loved working with plants,” he said. “My father told me I should go to college for a year and see if it was for me. It was really fun and gave me a great academic foundation to go with my already established interests.”

Tuinstra went on to Purdue University for his graduate work and landed a teaching and research position at Kansas State University. Some years later he came back to Purdue, where he is a professor of plant breeding and genetics and holds the Wickersham Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Research.

His work centers on how corn and sorghum plants can maintain their resiliency in high temperature and low water environments.

“Corn is the number one cereal crop grown in the world,” said Tuinstra, “and sorghum joins wheat, rice and barley to make the top five. Corn was a new world plant from Mexico that has adapted to the old world. Sorghum is an old world plant from Africa that has adapted to the new world. The two crops look and act alike and are very important globally.”

Tuinstra and his research teams and collaborators across the globe are determining how to develop new strains of the crops that can be grown in more locations and become more climate resistant.

In India, there’s a project to help farmers grow corn in the hot and dry summer season. In Niger and Senegal, the attempt is to develop food-grade sorghum varieties with new quality traits. Here in the U.S., various projects in Indiana and Arizona test methods to diversify and strengthen corn and sorghum plants.

While employing the latest and most innovative technologies to assist in these plant-breeding initiatives, Tuinstra notes that “building a better crop” has been going on for thousands of years.

“We can use remote sensing technology to monitor plant development, fly drones over fields to take pictures of growing crops and build systems to capture data on plants. It’s a great research platform.” Mitch Tuinstra

“For centuries this work was done by farmers who were incredibly skilled observers,” he said. “They knew which crop attributes were of value and saved the seeds from the best plants. This tradition has given us the crops we have today.”

Tuinstra is particularly excited about the new Plant Science Research and Education Pipeline at Purdue, an initiative he is directing that brings experts from different disciplines together—biologists, geneticists, engineers, computer scientists, aviation technologists—to tackle challenging agricultural issues.

“World-class researchers representing diverse technological fields can help us observe plants better to see what is working,” said Tuinstra. “For example, we can use remote sensing technology to monitor plant development, fly drones over fields to take pictures of growing crops and build systems to capture data on plants. It’s a great research platform.”

Tuinstra is aware that some people are wary of manipulating crop genetics, but as a student of agricultural history, he sees the continuity of his work following in the footsteps of generations of farmers before him.

He also sees an analogy in the gospel narrative of the true vine.

“The Bible teaches that we are all grafted into the vine of Jesus Christ,” he said. “We’re not originally from that vine, but God in his grace has grafted us in, just as farmers have done for centuries with grapes and other fruit crops.”

Tuinstra believes his research is needed more than ever as global climate changes have brought more temperature extremes and drought conditions to many countries.

“If the temperatures keep going up, yields will decline,” he said. “We are trying to build better food products.”