INDUSTRY
UGA scientist honored
Wayne Hanna receives Lifetime Achievement Award by Clint Thompson for CAES News University of Georgia scientist Wayne Hanna has
received his share of awards, but he says there’s something extra special about the Lifetime Achievement Award he received at the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB) annual meeting on August 28, 2019.
UAC MAGAZINE | FALL 2019
Jim McFerson (right), director of Washington State University’s Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center, presents famed USDA turfgrass breeder Wayne Hanna, UGA professor of crop and soil sciences, with the National Association of Plant Breeders (NAPB) Lifetime Achievement Award at the NAPB's annual meeting in Pine Mountain, Georgia.
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“I think the biggest satisfaction that comes from winning the award is that the efforts in Tifton are recognized and acknowledged,” Hanna said.
Hanna has served as a part-time professor in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences on the UGA Tifton campus since 2003. This followed a successful 32-year career as a research geneticist and research leader with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS) in Tifton, Georgia. Hanna, whose specialty is crop genetics and plant breeding, has authored or co-authored more than 670 scientific papers. He’s developed and released 31 cultivars and 35 parental lines, inbreds and improved germplasms of turf, ornamental and forage genera; this includes 27 plant patents and four plant patents in final review.
His cultivars are planted across the world as forage for summer grazing and on landscapes, golf courses and athletic fields — including those staging the World Cup and Olympics. Hanna was well deserving of the award, according to Jim McFerson, professor of horticulture at Washington State University and chairperson of the NAPB Awards Committee.
“For more than 50 years at both the USDA ARS and the University of Georgia, Dr. Hanna has assembled and distributed forage and turfgrass germplasm, developed and released highly successful turfgrass varieties, published hundreds of papers on breeding and genetics, and trained numerous graduate students and postdocs. Dr. Hanna is exactly the kind of scientist, mentor and human being the NAPB seeks to honor with its prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award.” ~ Jim McFerson
Professor of horticulture, Washington State University Chairperson, NAPB Awards Committee
A native of Texas, Hanna earned a doctorate in genetics from Texas A&M University in 1970. During the first 32 years of his career, Hanna studied male sterility systems, reproductive and chromosome behavior, radiation and plant improvement, hybridization, gene action, linkage and inheritance analyses, alien germplasm transfer, and forage quality components.
