Plant geneticists and biologists at the University of California, Davis, have received US$40 million from the US Department of Agriculture to lead two five-year projects and recruit roughly 65 PhD students and postdocs. Jorge Dubcovsky, a wheat geneticist at Davis, says that he and collaborators at 28 institutions in 21 states will use the funding to recruit around 30 PhD students and 20 postdocs to breed wheat and barley able to resist drought and disease and use nitrogen efficiently. A further 15 graduate students and postdocs will be recruited to help sequence and mine conifer genomes, says project head David Neale. Dubcovsky says that in view of a steady decline in plant-breeding training programmes, the projects will offer recruits a rare opportunity to gain skills in plant physiology, molecular breeding and bioinformatics that are in high demand at agricultural companies.