Growing up on a farm in St. Martinville, Brayden Blanchard (2024 Ph. D., PE&SS) knew he wanted to make a living doing something related to sugarcane - the crop his family has cultivated for five generations.
Breeding Better Cane: LSU Alumnus Brayden Blanchard Aims to Accelerate Sugarcane Innovation
Early Interest in Sugarcane Breeding
As a senior in high school, Brayden Blanchard, Ph. D tagged along with his father to a grower meeting at the local sugar mill, where he met LSU AgCenter sugarcane specialist Kenneth Gravois. Intrigued as he listened to Gravois talk about his background in breeding new crop varieties, Blanchard’s future began to come into focus.
“I decided I wasn't going to be a farmer,” Blanchard recalled. “But I was still very, very close and attached to the industry — and so it was about, ‘How do I make kind of a different type of an impact?’ I decided I wanted to be a sugarcane breeder then, and I just stuck with that throughout.”
After graduating with his Ph.D in Plant, Environmental, and Soil Sciences at LSU in 2024, he is now doing his part to help develop improved sugarcane varieties, having joined the LSU AgCenter Sugar Research Station in St. Gabriel as an assistant professor.
Advancing Sugarcane Breeding with Quantitative Genetics
Blanchard specializes in quantitative genetics — a field of study that involves using technology to better understand how individual genes combine to influence traits like sucrose content or disease susceptibility. He hopes to use his skills to make the lengthy, rigorous breeding process more efficient.
He is no stranger to the Sugar Research Station, having worked there for several years, first as a student worker and later as a research associate, while pursuing bachelor's and doctoral degrees at LSU.
It was at the station that Blanchard learned about the many years of work that go into creating a single new variety. When he saw farmers flock to the facility for field days, eager to hear the latest updates from the breeding program, he came to understand that a new variety offers the promise not just of improved yields — but also improved profits and livelihoods for farming families like his own. He was sure he had chosen the right career path.
“When I learned exactly what a new variety means to our growers, that was probably the biggest draw — because the impact that a new variety can have is astronomical when it comes to the productivity of the industry,” he said.
The Sugarcane Breeding Process: A 12-Year Journey
It takes about 12 years for a new sugarcane variety to be released to the public. The process begins with scientists crossing “parent” plants, generating thousands of genetically unique seedlings every year.
The varieties developed from these crosses are evaluated and whittled down through years of testing. The vast majority do not make the cut to become the next commercial variety.
Many factors go into deciding whether a variety is good enough to be released. It has proven a challenge to come up with something better than L 01-299, a consistent performer that has been popular with farmers for several years.
But it’s crucial to bring new genetics into the industry, Blanchard said. Growing a variety for a long time or on a lot of acreage gives diseases a chance to adapt to it. Quantitative genetics can make a difference.
The Role of Quantitative Genetics in Improving Breeding Efficiency
Blanchard is the first to admit that his field of expertise can be hard to understand.
“Quantitative genetics is very abstract, and sometimes I even struggle with that,” he said. “But it’s all about dealing with error and increasing the efficiency of the breeding pipeline.”
Modern researchers like Blanchard have huge amounts of data at their fingertips thanks to drone imagery, sensors, and DNA taken from plant samples. Computer tools enable scientists to make sense of all this information: Which genes are associated with a positive trait like disease resistance? Which plant flaws might be the result of environmental conditions, and which ones are due to genetic characteristics?
“We are becoming better and better at understanding what’s there and what we can manipulate,” Blanchard said. “Meanwhile, we’re getting better and better at identifying which crosses are more likely going to be high performing.”
Speeding Up Sugarcane Breeding with Quantitative Genetics
Blanchard’s training in quantitative genetics adds a new element to the AgCenter sugarcane breeding program, building on an existing molecular genetics component.
“We can use these tools to know that something is a good parent and recycle that particular clone back into the crossing program,” said Collins Kimbeng, AgCenter sugarcane breeder. “If the genes that we need to make progress are absent in our population pool, we would know about that earlier, and then that will help us to go somewhere to find those genes. Efficiencies are going to be improved with the new program that we have.”
The addition of quantitative genetics to the breeding program could even speed up the timeline for releasing a new variety, Blanchard said.
Strengthening Industry and Family Ties Through Research
“Developing a new variety is one of the only things that a farmer can’t do. It’s out of their hands. All they can do is test and see what they like about a variety,” Blanchard said. “So my dad and I have certainly gotten closer, and I lean on him for a ton of knowledge. But now, he also leans on me for the new information that we are generating.”
To read more alumni features visit the LSU Alumni Association Online Magazine.
Bob Simmons, a 1949 LSU grad, will celebrate his 100th birthday in June 2020 and shared his most memorable life experiences over the last century.
Memorial Oak Grove on LSU campus is being reimagined as a prominent place of remembrance and on Nov. 11, the 100th anniversary of the end of the war,...
RUFFIN RODRIGUE founded Ruffino’s in 1998 with an understanding that he wanted to create a place where people could come to “celebrate life.” Today,...
