University Communication
Lincoln, Neb. When Xiaoxi Meng and Zhikai Liang first proposed the idea a couple of years ago, James Schnable was skeptical. To say the least.
“‘Well, you can try, but I don’t think it’s going to work,’” the associate professor of agronomy and horticulture recalled saying to Meng and Liang, then postdoctoral researchers in Schnable’s lab at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
He was wrong and, in hindsight, never happier to be. Yet at the time, Schnable had fair reason to raise an eyebrow. The duo’s idea that the DNA sequences of cold-sensitive crops that surrender to a hard frost could help predict how wilder, hardier plants tolerate freezing conditions seemed audacious. To say the least. Still, it was a low-risk, high-reward proposition. Because if Meng and Liang could get it to work, it might just fast-track efforts to make cold-sensitive crops a little or even a lot more like their cold-resistant counterparts.