Margaret Smith, “embodiment of the land grant mission,” elected emerita

Plant breeding a “combination of science and art”

Smith grew up in Western New York, the child of two mechanical engineers. She loved plants and came to Cornell expecting to learn how to run a flower shop or do landscaping. Genetics 281, a required course for her plant sciences curriculum, changed everything. Where most students in her major trudged through the course and its “dreaded fruit fly lab,” Smith discovered that she loved it. Immediately upon learning that plant breeding existed as a major, Smith entered the department chair’s office, unannounced, asked to volunteer and was given a job on the spot. 

“Plant breeding is often described as a combination of science and art,” Smith said. “[Cornell alumna and Nobel Prize laureate] Barbara McClintock used to say that when you spend enough time with an organism, you get a feel for it. Your eye is caught by something and you recognize it might be valuable even if you don’t know why. There’s the rigorous, scientific side of plant breeding, and there’s the creative part of it. That intersection is where I sit.” 

Developing corn resistant to major pests

Smith began research work in Latin America during her doctoral program and continued afterward, as a plant breeder in Costa Rica, and then as a corn breeder at the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico – the same facility where Norman Borlaug conducted wheat research that won him the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize. 

At CIMMYT, Smith was part of a team that led a large, international project to develop corn varieties resistant to multiple pest species. Stem borers, like the European corn borer in New York, burrow into plants via leaves or stalks, then chew tunnels through the corn. At best, the pests reduce yields; at worst, they cause “dead heart,” killing plants from the inside out. Smith and her colleagues sought out promising corn seeds from Mississippi State University, the University of Missouri, Cornell, CIMMYT, and the Islands of Antigua. 

They then undertook extensive experiments cross-breeding, for example, New York seeds with resistance to European corn borer, with Mexican seeds resistant to southwestern corn borer, with Mississippi seeds resistant to sugarcane borer. They broadened their efforts, sending initial crosses to be tested in Africa, Latin America and the U.S., hoping to build corn that could resist even more pests, including fall armyworm (native throughout the Western Hemisphere), African corn stalk borer, and spotted stemborer (one of the most devastating corn pests in Asia and Africa). The resulting Multiple Borer Resistant (MBR) seedstock produced from this project was made available to plant breeders in any country who wanted it, and served as genetic ancestors for new corn varieties for decades – increasing yields and reducing the need for insecticides in the U.S. and around the globe. 

“I remember Margaret saying that when she lived in Mexico, on the drive to work every day, she would see people who didn’t have enough food, they were poor, they needed support, and that’s really who she was working for,” said Philip Kear, Ph.D. ’18, who was advised by Smith during his doctoral program and is now a genetic resources scientist with the global research partnership CGIAR. “Ultimately, she really cared about the people. That’s a lesson I’ve carried with me throughout my career.”

Leveraging diversity to strengthen US and NY corn

Throughout her career, Smith has maintained that focus on the public good, and on diversity as a source of strength and resilience. For example, she collaborated in a USDA-led project, Germplasm Enhancement of Maize (GEM). The public-private partnership involved 8-12 universities, USDA, and private companies working together to increase genetic diversity of U.S. corn, by crossing in corn strains from around the world, said Richard Pratt, professor at New Mexico State University, who was also a collaborator. The project reduced genetic vulnerability to pathogens and insects, and increased diversity of grain quality traits, Pratt said. The GEM project ultimately released hundreds of varieties. 

Smith and Pratt also collaborated for nine years on research to evaluate and breed new corn varieties for organic growers. As genetically modified corn grew in popularity across the U.S., organic growers found they had fewer and fewer options for non-modified hybrid seed. Smith, Pratt, and their collaborators began breeding work to develop new varieties suitable for organic production. 

“Our project was more of a proof of concept, and now there are companies in the private sector offering organic-certified corn hybrid seed,” Pratt said. “And that’s kind of our role in the public sector, to do this sort of longer-term, higher-risk, proof of concept research.”

In addition to her own research, Smith has always been ready to support other faculty to achieve their goals, said Tom Overton, professor and chair of animal science and director of PRO-DAIRY. For example, Cornell for many years conducted independent trials on corn silage – the largest feedstock for New York’s dairy industry – but that program had withered. When PRO-DAIRY researchers wanted to resurrect the silage trials to evaluate which varieties perform best in the Northeast, they faced the daunting task of starting from scratch with no staff or programming to support it. Then Smith stepped in. 

“She generously offered to adapt her program and help get those silage trials off the ground again, because she knew it would help our farmers to have that third-party information,” Overton said. “I think her intentions are always to support whatever would be in the best interest of our growers in New York.” 

Regional leadership for the public good 

Smith has spent decades in Cornell leadership, most significantly her 17 years as associate director and then director of Cornell AES. As part of that role, Smith served in agInnovation Northeast, an organization that brings together directors of agricultural experiment stations across 14 states. Ag experiment stations support state-level research to benefit agriculture, the environment and community wellbeing, and they oversee multi-state research projects that seek to share resources and information to address regional problems. Smith held the record for serving on the most multi-state research projects in the region, said Rick Rhodes executive director of agInnovation Northeast, and a professor at the University of Rhode Island. 

“Margaret was the one who made sure that the trains ran on time: the project is delivered on time, on target, on budget. She was keenly aware that these projects were being supported by public funds, and she always had this steady, principled voice that kept the focus on the science, collaboration and public benefit. She was the conscience,” Rhodes said. “I’m absolutely convinced that she made us all better collaborators, better scientists, and better stewards of our institutional missions. She’d step out of the spotlight and assist all of our directors to step into it. That’s what made her so exceptional. She has that rare combination of excellence in science, administrative skill, and being a warm human being.”

Margaret made us all better collaborators, better scientists, and better stewards of our institutional missions. – Rick Rhodes

Local to global impact

Since her earliest research in Costa Rica and Mexico, Smith has retained a commitment to fighting hunger internationally. She has held joint appointments at Cornell – in the School of Integrative Plant Science and in the Department of Global Development. This commitment has benefited her collaborators at home and abroad.

Smith taught courses on corn breeding for several years at the West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (WACCI). Housed at the University of Ghana, Cornell scientists partnered with colleagues in West Africa to train and support plant breeding efforts in Africa, for Africans. She also oversaw research projects by doctoral students addressing multi-national pest and disease resistance, and efforts to improve nutritional quality of corn in regions where many women lacked essential micronutrients like iron and zinc. For decades, Smith collaborated with colleagues in Central America and Africa.  Still today, she works in the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico to maintain winter nurseries of varieties she is developing for New York. These relationships enable her to grow two corn crops per year and create new varieties in half the time.

International research broadened her perspective and enabled her to ask questions she would never have thought of otherwise, Smith said. Her job as a plant breeder at the Tropical Agriculture Center for Research and Teaching in Turrialba, Costa Rica, involved working with the poorest, smallholder farmers in Central America to test whether new varieties being released by universities and organizations like CIMMYT would improve their food security. 

“At the time, the thinking was that scientists should do their breeding under optimal conditions, and if a new variety is better under optimal conditions, it’ll be better across the board. But we found that this is not true,” Smith said. 

In collaboration with national breeding programs in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama and El Salvador, Smith and her colleagues assessed varieties on farms of 1-2 acres, where families were relying on marginal land to grow most of the food they would eat. Higher-quality farmland had almost all been taken over by large corporate entities to grow crops like coffee and bananas for export, she said. 

“These smallholder farmers were trying to maximize every inch, soil quality was poor, and they couldn't afford fertilizer. And most of the new varieties being released by the top research programs didn’t offer them any advantage, because they were not being developed with those constraints in mind,” Smith said. “It made me think a lot about breeding objectives and who chooses them, and what considerations we need to keep in mind to ensure that we truly meet the needs of the people we’re trying to serve.”

Continuing legacy

            Over her almost-forty years on Cornell's faculty, Smith has taught thousands of students and advised over 75 graduate students, who have gone on to careers in academia, private industry, and national and international research. 

“Margaret is brilliant. She sees connections remarkably fast, and she constantly encourages you to dig deeper, look more closely, always come back to what is absolutely rational and knowable and work from those facts, rather than get carried away with how much you love a particular idea,” said Frank Kutka, Ph.D. ‘05, who was advised by Smith and teaches sustainable agriculture at the College of the Menominee Nation. “She is the best scientist I ever met, absolutely. She made all of us better scientists and better humans by knowing her.”

Smith is characteristically humble and, when asked about her own contributions, frequently points to predecessors, colleagues and students whose work she admires. 

“The history of breeding and genetics with corn at Cornell is long and deep,” Smith said. “I feel like a minor contributor to a very profound history, and there’s still profound work going on. Mine is a small piece but it’s been really fun.”

Krisy Gashler is a freelance writer for the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station.