Born: 1953 (circa), United States (assumed)
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is shared from The New Georgia Encyclopedia, which allows the use of protected materials for noncommercial educational purposes.
Peggy Ozais-Akins, a professor of horticulture at UGA’s Coastal Plain Experiment Station, published a study in 2003 detailing her work to engineer pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum), a drought-resistant cereal used for grazing in the Southeast, including Georgia. Pearl millet cultivars (or varieties) have been improved over the years by traditional breeding, but because of the lengthy time involved with breeding, some feared that improvements would not keep pace with the demand for high-yielding, pest-resistant cultivars. Ozais-Akins successfully developed a system to make a transgenic pearl millet cell that can be quickly improved using genetic-engineering techniques and then coaxed to grow into a full, fertile plant.