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Record Oklahoma Cotton Crop Got Bigger In Final USDA Crop Production Summary

 
For Oklahoma cotton producers, it has been a remarkable year. With an ideal fall growing season, the 2016 crop got bigger with each crop production update, culminating with the January Crop Production 2016 Annual Summary report. USDA reports that the Oklahoma cotton crop is a record crop- both in yield and in overall production. Cotton farmers in the state have produced 620,000 bales, ten percent more than was predicted in December and a whopping sixty six percent more than was grown in 2015. 
 
The pounds of lint per acre also increased from month to month this past fall as well- topping out at a record 1,026 pounds in the January summary. That's 17% more than the 876 pounds produced in 2015. The huge production total was achieved from a combination of the record yield and substantial increase in the number of acres harvested- 290,000 in 2016 versus 205,000 acres in 2015. Adequate water for irrigation from Lake Altus Lugert was one factor- along with timely rains in the southwestern counties of the state where the majority of the cotton is grown. 
 
Oklahoma corn production was also higher than 2015- with 42.4 million bushels produced on 350,000 harvested acres. The 2016 production was up 17% from the previous year. After a big jump last year- Oklahoma sorghum production took a small step back with fewer acres grown in the state in 2016. Sorghum production totaled 20.4 million bushels, down five percent from a year ago. We actually saw a small increase in bushels per acre, but the crop saw forty thousand fewer acres harvested this year versus last. 
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Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”