Cell – 919-616-6775
Twitter: @NCStateSoybeans

Dr. Rachel Vann provides leadership for the NC State Soybean Extension Program focused on providing soybean stakeholders across North Carolina with agronomic information that will aid in increasing soybean yields, maximizing profit, and protecting soybean seed quality. She concurrently serves at the N.C. PSI Platform Director for Extension, Outreach, and Engagement. She is also the lead PI for the national Science for Success Initiative that delivers best management practices to US soybean farmers through robust research and Extension collaboration.

Rachel directs her Extension efforts towards both general soybean agronomic management and interdisciplinary pursuits to deliver value for soybean producers. The focus of her research program includes intensified rotations, appropriate soybean maturity group selection, ideal planting windows, rotational effects on soybean production, maximizing cover crop benefits to increase soybean yields, product evaluation, soybean seed quality protection, novel information delivery strategies, and grain pea production.

Rachel is passionate about disseminating research-based information using a diversity of strategies, including novel delivery strategies like Beans Gone Wild. Rachel conducts a variety of Extension Agent training activities annually and she teaches the Agricultural Institute and NC State Undergraduate course on soybean production each semester and a field-based graduate student course every other year.

Rachel grew up in Geneseo, Illinois and completed her Bachelor’s Degree at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign studying Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences with a minor in Crop and Soil Science (B.S. 2012). She completed her graduate degrees at NC State University. Her Master’s degree focused on cover crop management in organic corn production and organic canola production (M.S. 2015). Between her Master’s and Ph.D. she completed a U.S. Borlaug Fellowship in Costa Rica. Her Ph.D. focused on cover crop breeding and management and weed control in cotton (Ph.D. 2017). Prior to beginning her position at NC State as the Soybean Extension Specialist, Rachel was a Postdoc in the Organic Grains Program at NC State.