Dr. Suza is the Director of the Plant Breeding E-Learning in Africa (PBEA) initiative, which draws upon the agronomic expertise at Iowa State to create open-source online training materials in plant breeding and genetics. These materials are being used by faculty in Uganda, South Africa, and Ghana to supplement Masters’ programs at their universities, with a particular emphasis on improving food security to combat hunger.

Dr. Suza grew up in Tanzania and earned his undergraduate degree in Zimbabwe. After coming to the U.S., he earned a Master’s degree from Murray State University in Kentucky, and his Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and Genetics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He has worked for the World Food Program in Angola and for UNICEF Zimbabwe on issues of food security.

To keep up with the food needs of a rapidly expanding global population, farmers must adjust their strategies — particularly in light of climate change. This requires knowledgeable plant breeders, who can produce seeds for crops that are more nutritious and well-adapted to their environment. Yet across 30 sub-Saharan African countries, there is an average of only 5 such breeders per country. Although there is a wealth of such information in the U.S., it is not feasible or practical to bring students from around the world here to train. Instead, efforts must be made to train a new generation of African plant breeders in Africa. With support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, PBEA and a second project from the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa are expected to graduate 90 students over the next 3 years. However, it is hoped that future expansion of these pilot projects will be taken up by governmental and NGO-based support.

In addition to curriculum development for PBEA (he’s designed 42 of their e-modules), Dr. Suza is interested in finding ways to improve the ability of crops to survive unfavorable conditions, such as drought and infection. This work will contribute to the development of heartier crops, needed to feed the millions of people relying on them.

Sterols are a kind of steroid, found across plants, animals, and fungi. (The one you’re probably most familiar with is cholesterol.) Sterols have been shown to be important for plant development and growth, and to help plants survive unfavorable conditions. However, the majority of research on how sterols are made and used has been done in animals.

In a recent paper, Dr. Suza used N. benthamiana (a close relative of tobacco) as a model for how sterol production and accumulation vary, both across different tissues of the plant and over time as the plant develops. While many of the details of this paper are extremely technical, the important takeaway is that the authors were able to identify a number of different “critical points” in the production of sterols. With this information in hand, future research can focus on changing what happens at these critical points and observing the outcome, with the eventual goal of understanding why sterols are so important to plant physiology and how that knowledge can help engineer more reliable food for the world.