Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

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Donald Danforth Plant Science Center Our mission: Improve the human condition through plant science.

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How can we grow enough food for a growing population while protecting the land we depend on? That's the question at the ...
10/16/2026

How can we grow enough food for a growing population while protecting the land we depend on?

That's the question at the heart of “Conversations: The Future of Farming,” on October 29 at the Danforth Center.

Regenerative agriculture offers new possibilities for improving soil health, reducing inputs, and making farming more sustainable. But what does it look like in practice, and what will it take for these approaches to work on a larger scale?

Join us for a discussion moderated by Margy Eckelkamp, award-winning agricultural journalist with Farm Journal, and featuring farmer Matt Moreland of Moreland Farms, agricultural markets expert Stephen Nicholson of Rabobank, and Danforth Center VP of Research Allison Miller, PhD. Together, they'll explore whats working today and the opportunities and challenges ahead for regenerative agriculture.

This free event is open to the public, with options to attend in person or virtually. Registration is required. Learn more and register at the link in the comments!

In the 1870s, wild grapevines from Missouri helped save the French w**e industry. As phylloxera devastated European vine...
10/14/2026

In the 1870s, wild grapevines from Missouri helped save the French w**e industry. As phylloxera devastated European vineyards, George Engelmann at Missouri Botanical Garden helped arrange for pest-resistant native vines to be shipped to France as rootstocks.

Today, vineyards face new pressures from heat and drought. Grapevines can remain in the ground for 15 to 40 years, so choosing their rootstocks means planning for decades of changing conditions.

This spring, Danforth Center Principal Investigator and Saint Louis University Professor Allison Miller, PhD, traveled to Bordeaux to serve on a doctoral dissertation committee at ISVV - Institut des Sciences De la Vigne et du Vin. The experiment she reviewed explores how rootstocks can help vines withstand environmental stress, with findings that could help additional varieties qualify for use in French vineyards.

Missouri’s eight native grapevine species could contribute useful traits to future rootstocks, just as native vines supplied pest resistance in the past. But keeping those possibilities available requires protecting wild grapevines. A study published in Plants, People, Planet, coauthored by Miller, identifies gaps in their conservation across the Americas.

Missouri helped supply an answer once. Protecting its native vines today preserves options growers may need for challenges ahead. Read the full blog at the link in the comments.

How does corn respond when heat and drought strike at the same time? And how can those stresses affect plants long after...
10/12/2026

How does corn respond when heat and drought strike at the same time? And how can those stresses affect plants long after growing conditions improve?

Danforth Center scientists Katie Murphy, PhD, and Malia Gehan, PhD, contributed to a new study published in The Plant Journal examining how 47 genetically diverse varieties of corn respond to heat, drought, and both stresses combined.

Using the Center's Bellwether Phenotyping Facility, researchers tracked changes in plant growth over time. They found that heat and drought affected young corn plants differently, and that a plants response to one stress didnt necessarily predict how it would respond to both. Follow-up experiments also showed that exposure to stressful conditions early in a plants life could affect its growth and flowering long after those conditions ended.

The findings highlight why understanding how crops respond to multiple stresses, especially during early development, is important for developing more resilient varieties in the future.

Read the publication at the link in the comments below.

Meet Magdalena Janik, our 2026 William T. Kemper Fellow! A fifth-year PhD student at Washington University in St. Louis ...
10/09/2026

Meet Magdalena Janik, our 2026 William T. Kemper Fellow!

A fifth-year PhD student at Washington University in St. Louis and member of the Baxter Lab at the Danforth Center, Magdalena is studying how plants absorb, transport, and store elements, and how their genes control those processes.

Her research focuses on the ionome, the collective elemental makeup of a plant. By combining computational biology with hands-on experiments, shes working to identify genes that could help scientists develop crops with more essential micronutrients, grow plants in contaminated soils, or even remove toxic elements like cadmium and arsenic from the environment.

For Magdalena, the possibilities extend even beyond Earth. Her interest in astrobiology has her thinking about how understanding plants elemental needs could one day help scientists grow them in environments beyond our planet.

Read more about Magdalena, her research, and the journey that brought her from Poland to St. Louis at the link in the comments.

One last look back at Party with the Plants 2026! 🌱 Hundreds of guests joined us at the Danforth Center for an evening o...
10/08/2026

One last look back at Party with the Plants 2026! 🌱

Hundreds of guests joined us at the Danforth Center for an evening of music, food, drinks, and plant science. Our scientists gave guests a firsthand look at their research, turning the Center into what one attendee called an “adult science fair.”

The evening was a celebration of the science and people that make the Danforth Center special, while also helping close out our Grow Challenge Week of Giving. Thanks to the support of our community and the efforts of our Young Friends, this year's Grow Challenge raised nearly $170,000 to support plant science research and STEM education.

Revisit some of our favorite moments from the night in our latest blog! Read more at the link in the comments.

10/05/2026

An incredible event takes an incredible community.

A huge thank-you to this year’s Party with the Plants sponsors for helping our Young Friends bring an evening of science, food, and fun to life! Your generosity helps advance the plant science research and STEM education at the heart of our mission, and we're so grateful for your support.

From October 20–22, the 2026 Borlaug Dialogue will bring leaders from around the world to Des Moines, Iowa, to tackle ch...
10/01/2026

From October 20–22, the 2026 Borlaug Dialogue will bring leaders from around the world to Des Moines, Iowa, to tackle challenges facing global food security. This year’s Dialogue convenes under the theme, Before Hunger Wins, and marks the 40th anniversary of the World Food Prize.

Danforth Center President Giles Oldroyd, PhD, 2024 Top Agri-Food Pioneer, and Danforth Center Board Member Cary Fowler, PhD, 2024 World Food Prize Laureate, will participate on panels at the event.

Registration is still open for the 2026 Borlaug Dialogue. Link in the comments below.

Yesterday, Saint Louis University President Edward J. Feser, PhD, and Ellen Barnidge, PhD, MPH, SLU Interim Vice Preside...
09/30/2026

Yesterday, Saint Louis University President Edward J. Feser, PhD, and Ellen Barnidge, PhD, MPH, SLU Interim Vice President for Research, visited the Danforth Center, where they met with Danforth Center Principal Investigator Allison Miller, PhD and Center President Giles Oldroyd, PhD.

Dr. Miller, who serves as a professor of biology at SLU, led them through the Center’s research facilities, sharing more about the work happening here and introducing them to scientists along the way. Her joint appointment is one of the many ways our institutions are connected through research.

St. Louis is home to an incredible concentration of scientific expertise, and partnerships with our region’s universities help make that community even stronger. We’re grateful for our continued collaboration with SLU and the opportunities it creates to advance research across our institutions.

Meet Ryan Swanson, our 2026 William H. Danforth Fellow. A PhD candidate at the Mizzou and member of the Slotkin Lab at t...
09/29/2026

Meet Ryan Swanson, our 2026 William H. Danforth Fellow.

A PhD candidate at the Mizzou and member of the Slotkin Lab at the Danforth Center, Ryan is helping advance a new approach to plant gene editing that could make crop improvement faster and more precise.

His work has helped push TAHITI, a technology developed in the Slotkin Lab, from inserting about 430 base pairs of DNA to more than 25,000; work that could allow scientists to introduce complex, multigene packages in a single step.

For Ryan, those improvements add up to a bigger goal: helping plant scientists develop solutions to challenges like disease, drought and increasingly difficult growing conditions.

Read more about Ryan, his research and the path that led him to plant science at the link in the comments.

This year’s Grow Challenge® Week of Giving raised nearly $170,000, reaching 135% of our goal! Thank you to everyone who ...
09/29/2026

This year’s Grow Challenge® Week of Giving raised nearly $170,000, reaching 135% of our goal! Thank you to everyone who donated and helped make this possible. Your support keeps our work moving forward, from plant science research to STEM education and more.

Our Week of Giving came to a close Friday night with Party with the Plants, an evening of science, food, and fun that helped push us past our goal. A huge thank-you to our Young Friends for leading the event, our scientists who shared their work and led activities throughout the night, our sponsors and food and beverage partners, and everyone who joined us.

And to everyone who supported the Grow Challenge this year: thank you for making this one of our best yet.

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