UNH Celebrates Contributions of Researcher Brent Loy Oct. 3

Monday, August 28, 2017

Brent Loy

DURHAM, N.H. – J. Brent Loy, professor emeritus of plant biology and genetics at the University of New Hampshire, and a researcher with the NH Agricultural Experiment Station, will be honored at a twilight celebration Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017, recognizing his 50 years of research and innovation.

The celebration will take place from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Kingman Research Farm in Madbury. The event is free and open to the public but an RSVP is required.

Loy’s experiment station-funded work, has resulted in more than 60 new varieties of squash, pumpkins, gourds, and melons sold in seed catalogs throughout the world and represents the longest continuous squash and pumpkin breeding program in North America. Loy is responsible for 29 percent of UNH’s cumulative royalties earned since 1999.

He has received numerous honors including the 2015 Vegetable Breeding Working Group Award of Excellence by the American Society of Horticultural Science, which recognizes breeding programs that have had a significant impact on the vegetable industry within the past 20 years by providing salient basic information and/or cultivar or germplasm releases.

Seeds developed by Loy are sold worldwide by a number of seed companies, including Johnny’s Selected Seeds of Maine. “My association with Brent was critical to my own plant breeding work. Brent is my senior as a geneticist, as a plant physiologist, and as a practical plant breeder. To a degree I can attribute my own success to the knowhow and inspiration that has rubbed off on me during our thirty-some years of working together,” said Rob Johnston, founder and chairman of Johnny’s Selected Seeds.

Founded in 1887, the NH Agricultural Experiment Station at the UNH College of Life Sciences and Agriculture is UNH’s original research center and an elemental component of New Hampshire's land-grant university heritage and mission. 

The University of New Hampshire is a flagship research university that inspires innovation and transforms lives in our state, nation and world. More than 16,000 students from all 50 states and 71 countries engage with an award-winning faculty in top ranked programs in business, engineering, law, health and human services, liberal arts and the sciences across more than 200 programs of study. UNH’s research portfolio includes partnerships with NASA, NOAA, NSF and NIH, receiving more than $100 million in competitive external funding every year to further explore and define the frontiers of land, sea and space.