Dr. Todd C. Wehner
Biographical Sketch
Todd Wehner grew up on the west coast, and enjoyed backpacking
and cross-country skiing in the Sierra Nevada mountains, bicycle racing
and touring along the Pacific coast, and playing bassoon in a symphony
orchestra, woodwind quintet, and concert band.
He worked his way through 4 years at the University of California-Berkeley
as a bicycle mechanic, receiving his A.B. in botany (research: redwood
forest ecology) in 1975. After a 3-week tour of the four main Hawaiian
Islands by bicycle, Todd went to the University of Wisconsin-Madison
for a M.S. in Agronomy (research on snap peas) and a Ph.D. in plant
breeding and plant genetics (research on leafless peas) in 1979.
Dr. Wehner took over the cucumber breeding and genetics project at
North Carolina State University-Raleigh in 1979, and worked his way
from Assistant to Associate to Full Professor by 1989. In 1993, he took
on the additional responsibility for breeding and genetics research
on watermelon as well as luffa sponge
gourd. In 2002, he added specialty melon breeding to the list of crop responsibililities. His research has emphasized improved selection methods; recurrent
selection for fruit yield, earliness and quality; resistance to chilling,
nematodes, anthracnose, belly rot, gummy stem blight and downy mildew;
and germplasm evaluation to provide industry with new traits for the
development of improved cultivars.
Dr. Wehner has released cultivars and breeding lines,
published many journal articles and book chapters,
as well as other articles and reports. He has trained
more than 20 graduate students, and teaches plant breeding and seminar
preparation courses for graduate students. He has been involved
in efforts to collect and preserve cucumber, watermelon,
muskmelon, and luffa germplasm (including gene mutants)
from around the world. He was an advisor for production
of pickling cucumber in Sri Lanka in 1993, watermelon in
China in 1999, and cucurbit seed collection in Zimbabwe
in 2001. He led expeditions to collect germplasm from China
in 1994, and from the Republic of South Africa in 1996.
Dr. Wehner enjoys
bicycle touring, rock climbing, playing electric bass, landscaping
his yard, hiking in the Appalachian Mountains, and visiting
Atlantic Ocean beaches.
