Biography

Terry Felderhoff started working in sorghum research at the age of 15 as a high school worker in the Texas A&M Sorghum Breeding Program. This early introduction started his passion for crop improvement research, later obtaining a Master's Degree in Plant Breeding at Texas A&M University and a PhD in Genetics and Genomics at University of Florida.

The main mission of Dr. Felderhoff is the integration of genetic tools and genomics-enabled breeding platforms in the sorghum crop improvement community. As such, he works in the translational science arena; conducting basic genetic architecture science and delivering technologies to sorghum breeding programs.

Research

The sorghum genetics and molecular breeding program primarily researches yield-preserving traits, such as biotic and abiotic stress tolerances. The lab is currently researching early-season chilling tolerance, post-flowering drought stress tolerance, striga tolerance, sorghum aphid tolerance, and iron deficiency chlorosis tolerance. In addition to stress tolerance traits, the lab is researching transpiration efficiency, stable dwarfing alleles, grain tannins, plant dhurrin, and grain size.

Being in the translational science arena, the Felderhoff lab has deliverables to both basic science and to sorghum breeders. As such, the Felderhoff lab maintains a molecular breeding program which focuses on pre-breeding exotic material which contain traits of interest to be used by breeding programs, and developing germplasm for genetic elucidation research to be used by geneticists. The Felderhoff lab also focuses on developing effective, high-throughput molecular markers for traits of interest, which are being used by both public and commercial sorghum breeding programs.