Shelby Ellison

Assistant Professor

College of Agricultural & Life Sciences | Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences

Hometown: Plover, WI

Dr. Shelby Ellison is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. She received a B.S. in Genetics at UW-Madison, a Ph.D. in Genetics at UC-Davis and was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at UW-Madison. Her research interests include preserving, characterizing, and utilizing genetic diversity to develop new alternative crops that meet the needs of farmers while considering environmental implications. She is also interested in how human interactions with plants, through domestication and breeding, have altered the plant genome and how we can use these selection signatures to trace domestication and improvement throughout history. Dr. Ellison is leading a nationwide effort to collect feral cannabis germplasm to help rebuild the new US hemp seedbank. She is also a member of the Midwestern Hemp Reseach Collaborative which trials high cannabinoid, grain and fiber hemp cultivars for regional adaptation.

Talks:

Collecting Cannabis through Citizen Scientist Collaboration

This talk describes the history of cannabis in the US and our efforts to rebuild the US cannabis seed bank.

Cannabis Cultivation for Food, Fiber, and Flowers

Description of how to grow and process cannabis for food, fiber, and flower production.