Davis, California, USA
February 26, 2026
USDA-funded program trains experts in plant breeding, leadership, innovation
On a small farm north of Sacramento, floral designer Kassie Brown moved through rows of dense, waist-high bushes, cutting zinnias for market. Their long stems, variety of petal shapes and colors, both exciting and soothing, make them popular among shoppers at farmers markets and other customers looking for something different and locally grown.
Charlie Brummer, left, is founder and director of SCOPE -- the UC Davis Student Collaborative Organic Plant Breeding project. SCOPE gives students, such as those pictured here, hands-on training to develop high-value crops for small-scale farmers, a group neglected by most commercial seed companies. (Courtesy Saarah Kuzay/UC Davis)
These zinnias were developed at UC Davis’s SCOPE project – it stands for Student Collaborative Organic Plant Breeding Education. SCOPE gives students hands-on training in the science of breeding, plus skills to meet the needs of real farmers and lead in an industry that prizes innovation. In the process, students develop zippy zinnias, tasty tomatoes, wonderful wheat and other crops for California’s $9.6-billion-and-growing organic farming industry.
SCOPE students go on to jobs in conventional breeding and seed industries that then supply ranchers and farmers with plants that thrive in warmer temperatures, use less water and do better at resisting insects and disease – crucial for fueling California’s $61-billion agricultural sector.
SCOPE’s work is funded almost entirely by the United States Department of Agriculture. The project currently is operating on a three-year, $2 million USDA grant under the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension Initiative. But, the project’s funding is in danger.
The current USDA grant runs out in August, and a new grant application will be submitted soon, arriving amid a year-long trend of reduced federal support for university-based research. If members of Congress do not renew SCOPE’s funding, the energetic young scientists creating crops of the future will miss out on important experiences, warned Charlie Brummer, SCOPE founder, director and a professor in the UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences.
Breeding crops to meet new challenges, Brummer said, takes a long time, and it’s complicated. “The research is incremental,” he added. “We look at different varieties, different management practices. We’ll get data and select better traits for this environment or that management, but it takes years to evaluate. We may not know for eight to 10 years whether we have a new winner.”
Farmers and other visitors talk with SCOPE coordinator Laura Roser, right, during a field day at the UC Davis Student Farm in 2025. Zinnias, tomatoes, wheat and other crops that students had developed in the SCOPE project were on display. (Trina Kleist/UC Davis)
If SCOPE students lose these experiences, farmers all over the United States, both large and small, lose opportunities to stay in business.
That includes farmers like Jon Kupkowski, owner of The Refarmery, where he works with floral designer Brown. Kupkowski has been trialing experimental varieties from SCOPE for four years. He was especially glad to have SCOPE's zinnias when other crops failed last spring.
“The varieties from SCOPE have been growing beautifully,” Kupkowski said. “They're really consistent, really strong.”
What farmers get: Breeders who listen to our needs
John Kupkowski, right, with floral designer Kassie Brown. Kupkowski raises zinnias developed by the UC Davis SCOPE project at his farm, The ReFarmery in Rio Linda. The flowers add a high-value crop to the vegetables he offers at nearby farmers markets and through other sales channels. (Trina Kleist/UC Davis)
Kupkowski farms less than 2-1/2 acres on the outskirts of Rio Linda. He has been working with SCOPE breeders for about four years and has tried numerous experimental varieties of the students’ zinnias, tomatoes and hot peppers.
He especially values the relationship because the program develops plants adapted to the Sacramento-area soil and climate. (Program managers also are working with UC Santa Cruz and Cal Poly Pomona to develop varieties adapted to those locations; crops suited for the Central Valley are an important part of the work.)
“Having seeds that grow better here makes a big difference for us,” Kupkowski said. “We’re finding that most of the SCOPE varieties are better adapted, particularly when it gets really hot out.”
He recalled the temperatures of summer 2024, when the valley saw at least 30 days in a row of mercury above 100 degrees. In that heat, many tomato varieties dropped their flowers. But varieties developed by SCOPE were among those that survived, Kupkowski said.
Flowers, however, are his most valuable crop, and Kupkowski includes the SCOPE zinnias in weekly veggie boxes sold to subscribers. Zinnias are a unique product: People don’t usually find them at floral shops, and they’re willing to pay way more for flowers than veggies. Zinnias also are well-adapted to the local climate, have a long production season and are easy to manage once they get established. They’re an all-around good investment, he added.
For Kupkowski, another key value in his relationship with SCOPE is bending the ears of people who breed seeds. Small farmers like him are not, usually, of interest to commercial seed breeders, he said. That means SCOPE fills a crucial niche: The project supplies seed that meets the needs of early career and small farmers -- and their customers.
“It's really beneficial having the access to work directly with the breeders,” Kupkowski said. “We chat about what works and what doesn't.”
Grayson Tess, left, and Larissa Fitzhugh hold dried zinnia petals harvested from the SCOPE project, where they are undergraduate interns. (Trina Kleist/UC Davis)
What undergrads get: Hands-on experience brings learning to life
In a teaching greenhouse on campus, students Larissa Fitzhugh and Grayson Tess cleaned zinnia seeds off of petals pulled from dried flower heads. They'll use the seeds to expand their project and make the seed available to more farmers like Kupkowski.
For these undergraduate interns, solving problems -- like building the fan-and-box contraption they use to separate the seeds from the petals -- is one of the important skills learned in the project. They also have worked with farmers to understand farm practices, what they and their customers need, and figure out how plant breeding can meet those demands.
“It’s like, OK, these are things that matter to people!” Tess said. “Breeding is a part of agriculture that people usually don't think about, but it’s really important.”
Grayson Tess is an undergraduate intern at the SCOPE project and shakes dried zinnia petals into a contraption designed to separate the petals from their still-attached seeds. (Trina Kleist/UC Davis)
SCOPE students use those experiences to make decisions, as a team, about which varieties to continue testing and eventually release. Along the way, they also see the consequences of their choices. All that helps them bridge from theoretical knowledge to practical application, preparing them for jobs in the real world.
“SCOPE has been really good for cementing my understanding of what happens in plant breeding and, in general, how agriculture works,” Fitzhugh said. “You see the whole process from beginning to end.”
What business people get: Leadership and creativity to innovate
Saarah Kuzay was an undergraduate intern and, later, a graduate student leader at the SCOPE project on the UC Davis campus. Now with a Ph.D. in plant breeding, she works as an industry consultant. (Courtesy Saarah Kuzay/UC Davis)
Saarah Kuzay spent many years as a student with the SCOPE project. Now a Davis-area entrepreneur in plant breeding and a consultant to start-ups, Kuzay credited the program for providing a community where she learned leadership and soft skills. She uses those “in all my jobs,” she said.
“You don't learn those in the classroom. You don't learn it in a Ph.D. lab, but you can learn it in this kind of community,” Kuzay said.
“The thing about the SCOPE model that’s not common anywhere is that you have the grad students and the staff teaching the undergrads,” Kuzay explained. That’s where the real learning happens, she added. “And then, you have the undergrads teaching the other undergrads, so there's a chain of training.”
Those linkages foster creativity and collaboration, Kuzay said. “If you want to work in an innovative field, it's not just about having the scientific skill. It's learning how to apply it and how to work with all kinds of people. That part is actually really critical to the learning.”
SCOPE, she said, teaches “lasting skills that students can use.”
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