Rebecca Nelson

About

Professor Rebecca Nelson is the Principal Investigator of the Nelson Lab at Cornell University, where she holds the position of Professor in Plant Pathology & Plant-Microbe Biology, Plant Breeding & Genetics, and Global Development. Her research focuses on plant pathology and plant-microbe interactions, with an emphasis on improving agricultural sustainability and resilience. The lab's work includes studying diseases such as ear rots and mycotoxins, foliar diseases, and the development of farmer research networks. They also utilize remote sensing and spectral imaging technologies to advance their research. Professor Nelson's interdisciplinary approach integrates plant breeding, genetics, and global development to address challenges in agriculture, particularly those related to disease resistance and sustainable food systems.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Genetics
• Ecology
• Biology
• Business
• Machine Learning
• Geography
• Artificial Intelligence
• Environmental economics

Selected publications

• Articulating the effect of food systems innovation on the Sustainable Development Goals

  The Lancet Planetary Health · 2020 · 316 citations

  Food system innovations will be instrumental to achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, major innovation breakthroughs can trigger profound and disruptive changes, leading to simultaneous and interlinked reconfigurations of multiple parts of the global food system. The emergence of new technologies or social solutions, therefore, have very different impact profiles, with favourable consequences for some SDGs and unintended adverse side-effects for others. Stand-alone in…

  DOI

• Bundling innovations to transform agri-food systems

  Nature Sustainability · 2020 · 170 citations

  DOI

• The importance of dominance and genotype-by-environment interactions on grain yield variation in a large-scale public cooperative maize experiment

  G3 Genes Genomes Genetics · 2021 · 101 citations

  High-dimensional and high-throughput genomic, field performance, and environmental data are becoming increasingly available to crop breeding programs, and their integration can facilitate genomic prediction within and across environments and provide insights into the genetic architecture of complex traits and the nature of genotype-by-environment interactions. To partition trait variation into additive and dominance (main effect) genetic and corresponding genetic-by-environment variances, and to…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Utility of Climatic Information via Combining Ability Models to Improve Genomic Prediction for Yield Within the Genomes to Fields Maize Project

  Frontiers in Genetics · 2021 · 92 citations

  Genomic prediction provides an efficient alternative to conventional phenotypic selection for developing improved cultivars with desirable characteristics. New and improved methods to genomic prediction are continually being developed that attempt to deal with the integration of data types beyond genomic information. Modern automated weather systems offer the opportunity to capture continuous data on a range of environmental parameters at specific field locations. In principle, this information…

  PublisherDOI

• Maize genomes to fields (G2F): 2014–2017 field seasons: genotype, phenotype, climatic, soil, and inbred ear image datasets

  BMC Research Notes · 2020 · 75 citations

  OBJECTIVES: Advanced tools and resources are needed to efficiently and sustainably produce food for an increasing world population in the context of variable environmental conditions. The maize genomes to fields (G2F) initiative is a multi-institutional initiative effort that seeks to approach this challenge by developing a flexible and distributed infrastructure addressing emerging problems. G2F has generated large-scale phenotypic, genotypic, and environmental datasets using publicly available…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Peter Balint‐Kurti

  North Carolina State University

  45 shared

• James B. Holland

  Agricultural Research Service

  42 shared

• Tyr Wiesner‐Hanks

  Cornell University

  41 shared

• G. A. Forbes

  CGIAR

  40 shared

• Michael A. Gore

  Cornell University

  40 shared

• Judith M. Kolkman

  Cornell University

  39 shared

• Christopher C. Mundt

  Oregon State University

  36 shared

• Edward S. Buckler

  Cornell University

  31 shared

Labs

• Rebecca Nelson LabPI

Education

• BA

  Swarthmore College

  1982

Awards & honors

• International IPM Award of Excellence (2018)
• Outstanding Accomplishments in Science & Public Policy Award…
• Excellence in Int’l Service Award, American Phytopathologica…
• The 2010 Outstanding Partner Award for the ILRI-BecA Hub Nai…
• MacArthur Fellow (1998-2003)

Similar researchers at Cornell University

• Jean-Luc Janninkh-93
• Georg Janderh-89