sample crops growing in controlled settings

Crop Bioengineering Center

Ghanshyam Kandel, Shuyang Qu, Fally Masambuka-Kanchewa, Lulu Rodriguez, and Michael Martin holding an award

Congratulations to CBC's Lulu Rodriguez and team who received the AAAE Distinguished Research Presentation honor

Congratulations to Ghanshyam Kandel, Shuyang Qu, Fally Masambuka-Kanchewa, Lulu Rodriguez, and Michael Martin — authors of a 2025 North Central Region AAAE Distinguished Research Presentation, "Tracing the Origins of Biotech Beliefs: Perspectives from Mothers' Life Experiences"

Agrobacterium tumefaciens magnified 15,000 times in an image captured earlier this year with a scanning electron microscope at Iowa State University's Roy J. Carver High Resolution Microscopy Facility. Ephraim Aliu/Iowa State University.

Kan Wang and Team Reveal How Chromosomes Shape Biotech Bacterium Performance

Iowa State University researchers, led by Kan Wang, discovered that the way chromosomes are organized in the biotech bacterium Agrobacterium tumefaciens affects its growth, stress tolerance, and ability to transfer genes to plants. Their findings could help scientists fine-tune bacterial strains for improved performance in plant biotechnology and crop engineering. KCRG article | ISU article

The Iowa State research team, left to right: Steven Whitham, Alan Eggenberger, Kan Wang, Jessica (Qing) Ji, Connor Thorpe, Keunsub Lee and Shan Jiang.

CBC Collaboration Leads to Breakthrough in Plant Gene Editing Tool

Engineers and plant scientists at Iowa State, including several members of the Crop Bioengineering Center, worked together to improve a DNA delivery system for enhancing basic and biotechnology research for plants.
Read more about the plant gene editing tool

From left to right, Dior Kelley, Thomas Lübberstedt, and Justin Walley.

We are proud to announce that several of our esteemed CBC members have been recognized with prestigious awards!

We are proud to announce that several of our esteemed CBC members have been recognized with prestigious awards! Read the faculty member's full stories!

About Our Center

The ISU Crop Bioengineering Center (CBC) seeks to address the urgent, grand challenge to provide sufficient food, feed, biofuels and biorenewable chemicals for the world’s burgeoning population, through basic and applied research to enable the bioengineering of valuable traits in a variety of crops.