LIFE BOX 10.1. MAWD HINCHEEMaud Hinchee, Chief Technology Officer, ArborGen, LLCMaud HincheeI certainly did not plan on being a plant
biologist. However, my mother always
thought I would be a botanist, because I
eliminated her eggplant yield from her
backyard garden by sterilizing the flowers
without her knowing it (I hated eggplant).
It wasn’t until I took a college course that
captured my imagination that I decided to
be come a botanist. The class was Plant
Anatomy, which in some universities can
be quite dry. However, this course was
taught by Dr. Tom Rost at the University
of California, Davis—a young professor
who taught using an experimental
approach to understanding the form, struc-
ture and function of plant cells, tissues and
organs while allowing us to appreciate the
esthetic beauty of plant cells. As a some-
what artistic type, I liked this blend of
scientific discovery and microscopic art. I
went on to receive my B.S. degree in
Botany from the University of California,
Davis, (UCD) in 1975 and then my M.S.in Botany from the University of
Washington (UW). In my undergraduate
research, I studied the development of
roots. At UW, I compared and contrasted
the anatomical and growth characteristics
between aerial and soil roots ofMonstera
deliciosa. I returned to UCD where I
received my Ph.D. degree in 1981 in
plant morphogenesis. My project was to
determine what effect the cotyledons of
pea had on the development and distri-
bution of lateral roots in young seedlings.
How these various research projects
enabled me to become a plant biotechnol-
ogist is probably a matter of being in the
right place at the right time. Researchers
were just starting to make some headway
in developing methods for inserting
genes into plant cells. Since so little was
known at that time as to what controlled
which cells successfully incorporated
DNA, and which of these cells sub-
sequently could develop into a whole
plant, I was able to provide valuable
insights to the process as a plant morpho-
geneticist. I did my first training in plant
transformation techniques during a post-
doctoral research associate position at the
Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Experiment
Station in Hawaii, working on the incor-
poration of DNA into sugarcane proto-
plasts. I then was hired at Monsanto Co,
in St. Louis, MO in 1982. My first role
was determine why regeneration and trans-
formation experiments in soybean weren’t
leading to the expected results. This
activity provided me much insight into
the cellular basis for the regeneration
process and allowed me to design
methods to specifically target our genetic
engineering tool,Agrobacterium,tothe
right cells at the right time. The result
was a successful and reproducible
soybean transformation protocol that
yielded the first transgenic soybean con-
taining the Roundup Ready gene. Today,
90% of the soybeans grown in the United
States have this trait. It gives me great270 TRANSGENIC PLANT PRODUCTION