BLUE CORN–Richard Pratt, NMSU professor and head of the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, examines an ear of blue corn in a plot at NMSU’s Agricultural Science Center at Los Lunas. He is coordinating field trials at several of the university’s agricultural science centers around the state in a project aimed at making new organic corn varieties available to producers within the next few years. (Courtesy photo.)

Richard Pratt is standing in a field at New Mexico State University’s Leyendecker Plant Science Research Center south of Las Cruces talking about his corn research. Two things are worth mentioning here. One is that there’s not a cornstalk in sight. The other is that Pratt, who recently finished up his first year as head of the NMSU Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, has time for research.

The absence of corn is easy to explain. It’s February in southern New Mexico and the corn has all been harvested. The particular plot Pratt is standing in is greening up with hairy vetch, a winter cover crop being rotated in as part of that field’s three-year transition from traditional agriculture to certified organic status.

Finding time for the research, as busy as Pratt is with administrative responsibilities, is not easy but it is essential. He brought a large grant with him when he moved to NMSU from Ohio State University and is committed to expanding the project in his new Western environment.

Pratt’s research at Leyendecker and other NMSU agricultural science centers is part of a larger project titled “Strengthening public corn breeding to ensure organic farmers’ access to elite cultivars.” The organic corn breeding project involves a half-dozen researchers in several states and Puerto Rico. The team is evaluating existing varieties of organic corn for their viability in varied climates and developing new and better varieties through traditional breeding practices.

Pratt and colleagues are not doing their organic corn trials for a large seed company. Such companies currently have little interest in funding development of specialty crops like organic corn, according to Pratt; they tend to focus their investment on developing varieties that will appeal to very large numbers of producers.

This project is funded by a USDA Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative grant. Pratt’s share of the grant is approximately $450,000 for the four-year project, which is slated to end in 2014.

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