Ken Vogel

Ken Vogel is a Research Geneticist and Research Leader with the Agricultural Research Service USDA and Adjunct Professor of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE.  He is a native of western Nebraska.  He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Colorado State University.  Following service as an officer in the U.S. Navy, he received his Ph.D. degree in plant breeding and genetics from the University of Nebraska in 1974.   He began his USDA research career in September of 1974.  His primary area of research has been on breeding and genetics of introduced and native grasses for use in the Midwest and central Great Plains and associated management research.  He has developed improved cultivars of switchgrass, big bluestem, indiangrass, intermediate and crested wheatgrass, prairie sandreed, and Canada wildrye and several germplasms and has conducted genetic and management studies on numerous other species.  He has developed improved research tools including quantitative genetics, breeding, and statistical procedures and field and laboratory procedures for breeding forage grasses.  He has emphasized grazing evaluation in his research and has validated the economic value of improved grasses in grazing trials.  Since 1990 he has been conducting research to develop switchgrass into a biomass energy crop which has been critical to the development of biomass energy crops. His work on switchgrass has included basic and applied genetics research, all aspects of management research, net energy and fiscal economics studies, and C sequestration research.  He is a Fellow of the American Society of Agronomy, the Crop Science Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.