Juan Arbelaez-Velez, Ph.D.

Dr. Juan Arbelaez-Velez (he/him) studies the genetics and breeding of internationally important crops like rice and oats to diversify the regional agricultural system and support agricultural productivity in developing nations.
More information: 
Arbelaez is a plant breeder and geneticist passionate about reducing hunger, malnutrition, and poverty around the world. In pursuit of this passion, Juan is focusing on developing varieties of spring oat (Avena sativa) and rice (Oryza sativa) with enhanced nutritional quality, helping breeders around the world develop and implement cost-effective methods and tools to accelerate breeding for multiple traits, including yield and grain quality. Additionally, Arbelaez is developing cover crop oat varieties for the Midwest to protect life-sustaining natural resources. At the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Cali, Colombia, he worked on developing novel rice germplasm with introgressions from wild rice species to support the global rice community. Arbelaez completed his Ph.D. and post-doc in Dr. Susan McCouch’s rice genetics lab at Cornell University, working on understanding the genetic bases of tolerance to aluminum and iron toxicity, critical abiotic stresses affecting rice production in parts of South America and Africa. Prior to joining the University of Illinois, Arbelaez was a rice breeder at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), headquartered in the Philippines, where he played a critical role in the development and deployment of a global genomic selection strategy to accelerate rice improvement in irrigated environments across Southeast Asia and West Africa.
Affiliations: 
Dr. Arbelaez is an assistant professor in the Department of Crop Sciences in the College of Agricultural, Consumer Environmental Sciences (ACES) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.