Newly Elected Missouri Legislators Visit the Danforth Center

Today, on National Missouri Day, the Missouri General Assembly convenes for its 2023 legislative session. In December 2022, the newly elected freshmen legislators embarked on a bus tour of the state, stopping at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center along the way. During their visit, the legislators learned about the cutting-edge research, innovation community, job creation, and agricultural partnerships that the Danforth Center’s work supports.  

The tour gave the new legislators and overview of our research and took them to see some of the Danforth Center’s state-of-the-art facilities, including our Plant Growth Facility greenhouses and grow labs, our Bellwether Foundation Phenotyping Facility, and inventive new technologies such as Nadia Shakoor’s PheNode.  

After the tour, legislators heard from leaders within our innovation community. Karla Roeber discussed how the 39 North innovation district and world-class facilities grow and attract high-achieving companies and individuals to our region. Mike Davies of BioGenerator discussed the Helix Center incubator and shared lab space that supports early-stage companies. Christi Dixon spoke about how Benson Hill brings data science, plant science and food science together to develop new products that meet consumer demand, and how the ecosystem helped them go public on the NYSE in 2021.  Finally, Matt Luetje, COO of CoverCress, spoke about the exciting potential of the CoverCress™ crop and how entrepreneurial plant researchers can help provide sustainable, profitable outcomes for Missouri farmers.  

We are honored to have hosted Missouri’s newest legislators and to have provided them with an opportunity to learn about the Danforth Center’s work to bring top researchers to St. Louis’s growing innovation community, to create solutions that support the agricultural industry, our region’s economy, and to make the future brighter for the planet.  

photo credit: Jimmy Emerson, DVM