Meet the USDA-ARS National Program Leader in Small Grains, Oswald Crasta, PhD, and the new USDA-ARS PI for the U.S. Wheat and Barley Scab Initiative (USWBSI). He recently joined the USDA-ARS in February 2023.

From Family Farming to National Program Leader, and Everything in Between

Crasta was born and raised in a small holder farming family in South India. At an early age, he had a passion for addressing food security. He attended the University of Agricultural Sciences in Karnataka for his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. After graduation, he remained at his alma mater to teach undergraduate agronomy for three years. In 1990, Crasta moved to the U. S. to attend Cornell University for his doctorate degree. He then held two post-doctoral positions at Texas Tech University and Purdue University between 1993 and 1997.

Crasta’s career over the last 25 years has spanned both academia and industry. His primary research interest has been understanding the genetics and physiology of commercially important traits. While most of his research has involved crop plants including cucumber, maize, sorghum, soybean, sunflower, and wheat, he also has experience with working on microbes. His microbial experience primarily focused on gene discovery involved with host-pathogen interactions.

Before joining the USDA-ARS, Crasta was the chief scientific officer at Equinom Ltd., a plant-based food-crop breeding company, that develops value-added plant-based food by combining the use of genomics, biochemistry, and data science, with breeding. Prior to Equinom, Crasta was the global research and development leader and a research fellow in the Breeding Technologies Division of Research and Development at Corteva Agriscience. During his eight years at Corteva, he built and applied predictive breeding technologies to accelerate breeding for more than 10 crops.

Crasta’s diverse experience in areas of science including agronomy, crop physiology, genetics, genomics, bioinformatics, and breeding aid him in his new position. He was inspired to join the USDA-ARS given the unique contributions it has made to both national and international agricultural development.

His goal in his new role is to work collaboratively with health and food scientists to develop better food systems for the U.S. and the world. Crasta plans to work with stakeholders to identify the issues growers are facing preventing them from producing the quantity and quality of food needed to feed the projected world population of 9 billion people over the next two decades.

Simple Answers Are the Solution for Big Challenges

One piece of advice Crasta offers the next generation of world agricultural leaders is “collaborate vigorously to find simple solutions that are useful to the end users.” The world needs simple solutions. But it takes many disciplines working together to accomplish this he realizes. When generating simple solutions keep the result in mind, suggests Crasta. He believes it helps to communicate with the end users on a regular basis using their language. Crasta recommends keeping what Einstein once famously said in mind, “If you cannot explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

If you are interested in learning more about Crasta, contact him via email or LinkedIn.

You can also check out the series of previous USWBSI Featured Researchers.