Barry Tillman

Dr. Barry Tillman is a Professor of Agronomy at the North Florida Research and Education Center (NFREC). His research focuses on improving peanut varieties through conventional breeding and integrating genomic tools. He emphasizes sustainable agricultural practices, including water stress tolerance, herbicide efficacy, and precision agriculture technologies. His work bridges crop physiology, weed management, and technological innovation to enhance peanut production.

Research interests include peanut breeding, drought resilience, and the application of hyperspectral imaging and robotics for crop monitoring. He explores transgenerational stress memory and melatonin seed priming to improve crop yield under environmental stress. Recent studies address aflatoxin risk modeling, weed control strategies, and disease management using hydrothermal time models.

Dr. Tillman collaborates on developing cost-effective agricultural technologies, such as hyper-spectral cameras and robotic systems for plot-scale analysis. He has contributed to the registration of new peanut varieties like FloRun ‘T61’ and TUFRunner ‘297’, emphasizing functional food traits and disease resistance.