Michael Gore’s first foray into breeding was on his family farm in Virginia. But the budding scientist wasn’t pollinating peas or crossing carrots; he was poring over pedigrees and assessing blood lines – of horses. He assumed he’d become a veterinarian, but a freshman biology course at Virginia Tech introduced him to biotechnology research, and sent him down a different path.
“It resonated with me so strongly that the next day I changed my major. It turned on some switch and I knew immediately that was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” Gore said. “What appeals to me about breeding is the ability to come up with sustainable solutions to many of the world’s demands and needs.”
Gore, who first came to Cornell in 2004 to work in the maize genetics and diversity lab of Edward Buckler and received his Ph.D in 2009, recently returned as an associate professor in plant breeding and genetics. Prior roles include research positions at Rohm and Haas Company and Lancaster Labs in Pennsylvania, Pioneer Hi-Bred in Iowa, and the USDA-ARS Arid-Land Agricultural Research Center in Arizona.
He has worked with cotton, guayule and oilseed rape to optimize their use for fiber, rubber and jet fuel, but his focus now is on food, using molecular breeding to enhance the nutritional quality of crops such as maize and cassava.
