Koch has had a hand in increasing the growing potential of corn in areas where rural farmers struggle to produce adequate harvests. (Photo by Mike Randolph.)

In 2014, Tom Koch was a recipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Forward under 40 Award.

Koch manages genetics that are tested yearly in 35 countries. (Photo by Mike Randolph.)

The King of Corn

As vice president of research at AgReliant Genetics, Tom Koch PhD2005 is helping to change the face of agriculture around the globe.

Koch, who is a 2014 recipient of the Wisconsin Alumni Association’s Forward under 40 Award, became a commercial corn breeder at AgReliant’s breeding station in Champaign, Illinois, following graduation. After only three years, he was promoted to his current role, where he directs research for the third-largest corn seed company in the United States and the eighth largest in the world.

Currently based in Westfield, Indiana, Koch manages genetics that are tested yearly in 35 countries. His job has taken him around the world, and he has found success by valuing diversity in perspectives and culture, a skill he attributes to his UW experience.

“Through daily, global interactions in the corn industry, I have experienced and interacted with various world cultures,” he says. “These have been eye-opening life experiences I could not have fathomed growing up on my father’s small farm in southern Ohio.”

The technical side of his UW education has also allowed Koch to develop his own corn lines. Within the first two years of his career, he had hybrids in commercial trials. Three years later, his hybrids were being grown in fields across the nation. Currently, he has three new corn lines patented for commercial use in the United States, Canada, and Ukraine.

Koch has helped AgReliant create research facilities and bring employment opportunities to places such as Peru and Puerto Rico. He has also had a hand in increasing the growing potential of corn in areas where rural farmers struggle to produce adequate harvests.

“Helping to develop a research station in the deserts of Peru, where poverty is rampant, is quite humbling,” he says. “Knowing the genetics I am developing are being used in locations such as China to improve the lives of rural farmers, while still benefiting farmers in North America, is certainly rewarding,” he adds. “I never would have imagined that the most Midwestern of all crops, corn, would allow me to have such a worldwide impact so quickly.”