Kevin Crosby

Professional Summary

Kevin Crosby, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Horticultural Sciences. Crosby’s area of research is plant breeding and genetics of vegetable crops. He has worked on melon, pepper, tomato, onion and carrot. The main emphasis of his research has been the elucidation of genetic mechanisms for stress tolerance and enhanced nutritional quality. Crosby has discovered several novel traits and studied their inheritance in both melon and pepper. These range from root physiology and vigor to virus and insect resistance.  His program also has developed a genetic linkage map of melon with DNA markers linked to several key traits.   The development of thousands of novel families for genetic studies has also produced elite breeding lines for commercial seed companies and 9 cultivar releases.  In addition, Crosby has developed unique, high antioxidant pepper lines with flavonoid and ascorbic acid levels more than 400% higher than commercial cultivars.