Dr. Todd C. Wehner is leader of the cucumber and watermelon breeding project at North Carolina State University-Raleigh since 1979. His research has emphasized improved selection methods; recurrent selection for fruit yield, earliness and quality; resistance to chilling, nematodes, potyviruses, and fungal diseases; and germplasm evaluation. His objectives are to provide industry with new traits for the development of improved cultivars, research information, and graduate students who can run field plant breeding programs. He has been an instructor for the Plant Breeding Academy-America at UC Davis since 2006, and also works for PBA-Asia and PBA-Africa. Dr. Wehner was an advisor for production of pickling cucumber in Sri Lanka in 1993, watermelon in China in 1999 and 2008, and Poland in 2004. He participated in expeditions to collect germplasm from China in 1994, the Republic of South Africa in 1996, and Turkmenistan in 2008, and traveled professionally in Israel, Mexico, the Czech Republic, Canada, Thailand, France, Tanzania (Tanganyika and Zanzibar), Turkey, and Kenya. Dr. Wehner has his A.B. in Botany (UC Berkeley), M.S. in Agronomy and Ph.D. in Plant Breeding (University of Wisconsin-Madison).
