Open Source E-books on Plant Breeding and Genetics Available through ISU Digital Press
April 16, 2025
ISRC faculty affiliate Walter Suza, agronomy, and 25 additional Iowa State University contributing authors created a series of open source, agronomy e-books in plant breeding and genetics. Thanks to ISU Digital Press, a unit of ISU’s Parks Library, these resources are now available and free for anyone to use worldwide. ISU Digital Press provides the platform for the e-book modules as an open access publisher.
Suza, George Washington Carver Endowed Chair and Adjunct Associate Professor of Agronomy, served as Project Director for ISU’s Plant Breeding E-learning in Africa (PBEA) program from 2013 to 2021. Building on ISU’s expertise with online plant breeding education, Suza helped to develop open source, e-modules through PBEA to train African students in the management of crop breeding programs for public, local and international organizations. PBEA collaborated with faculty at universities in Ghana, South Africa and Uganda to use the e-modules as part of their curriculum to support a broader project based in Africa called Improved Master of Science in Cultivar Development for Africa. From 2013 to 2018, 90 MS students were trained in Africa using PBEA resources.
The collaboration to package PBEA e-learning modules into open educational resources (OER) textbooks began in 2021 after Suza received a Miller grant from the ISU Library. Since then, Suza and the ISU Digital Press team have published nine OER textbooks with the goal of sharing valuable knowledge and expanding the reach of the materials to get it into the hands of those who want to read them.
"This collaborative effort is touching lives beyond anything I could have imagined. It has been an honor and a privilege to work alongside dedicated colleagues and partners to advance plant breeding education around the world," said Suza. He even uses the e-books in teaching his Genetics 3200 course: Genetics, Agriculture and Biotechnology at ISU.
Between March 2023 and March 2025, the plant breeding OER textbooks have been accessed by 156,000 users and downloaded 7,500 times worldwide. In the U.S., the OER textbooks have been used by 21,000 users and downloaded 943 times, including 584 users and 106 downloads in Iowa.
The following e-books are available for free download via ISU Digital Press:
Genetics, Biotechnology, and Agriculture
Quantitative Methods for Plant Breeding
Quantitative Genetics for Plant Breeding
Principles of Cultivar Development
ISRC faculty affiliates contributing to the e-books include Walter Suza, Madan Bhattacharyya, Ken Moore, Arti Singh and Asheesh “Danny” Singh. The PBEA e-modules were made possible due to funding received from the Gates Foundation.