McKay - Plant Evolution and Ecology Lab

Led by Dr. John McKay, our lab studies the ecology, evolution, and genetics of how plants adapt to their local environments. As sessile organisms, plants must cope with every extreme their surroundings deliver — and our work seeks to identify the traits and genes that let them do it, especially adaptation to drought. Combining field ecology, quantitative genetics, and genomics, we connect natural plant populations to the crops of the future, with the goal of breeding more resilient, drought-tolerant varieties for a changing climate. The lab is also home to CSU's Hemp Resource Center, a clearinghouse for hemp research and information.

The Genetics of Drought Adaptation

Understanding how plants adapt to specific environments — and which genes make that possible — is central to our research. We study local adaptation in natural plant populations and translate those insights to crops through projects such as the ROOTS Project, an ARPA-E–funded effort to develop high-throughput root phenotyping, and work extending drought-adaptation genetics from the model plant Arabidopsis to Brassica crops. Alongside collaborators across the country, we aim to identify the traits and genomic regions that confer drought tolerance and to build them into improved, climate-resilient varieties.

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A Statewide Hemp Resource

The lab is also home to CSU's Hemp Resource Center, a clearinghouse for hemp research, news, and practical information. It gathers fact sheets, technical reports, and links to CSU and state resources, helping growers and stakeholders navigate the science and regulation of this re-emerging crop.

Publications

Learn more about how the McKay Lab is advancing the genetics of plant adaptation and drought tolerance to help build more resilient crops for a changing climate.

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News & Updates

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Contact Information

mailing address

307 University Ave, Fort Collins, CO 80523

phone

(970) 491-5730

e-mail john.mckay@colostate.edu