Welcome to Season 7 of Tiny Expeditions!
Welcome to Season 7 of Tiny Expeditions! This season, we did something we’ve never done before: we hit the road. For the first time, our expeditions took us outside of our home base in Huntsville and into the heart of Alabama’s Wiregrass region. Most of what you’ll hear was recorded on farms, in classrooms, and across the community of Dothan, the self-proclaimed Peanut Capital of the World.
Why make the trip? Because there’s an amazing story growing out of the Wiregrass, one peanut plant and one student scientist at a time.
To kick things off, we’re exploring the WIREGRASS Peanut Project, an authentic, hands-on learning experience connecting local classrooms to cutting-edge genomic research. Throughout the project, students are helping advance global peanut science and develop varieties uniquely suited for their own communities.
Join us for Season 7, Episode 1, “The Wiregrass Peanut Revolution,” and discover how high school students across southeast Alabama are helping create the next great peanut for Dothan and the world.
Behind the Scenes
Meet Our Guests
In this episode, we talk with some of the people at the heart of the WIREGRASS Peanut Project: a HudsonAlpha educator, a local teacher, and one of the students getting his hands dirty with real science.
Jennifer “Hutch” Hutchison
Educator Professional Learning Specialist at HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology
Jillian Etress
Science teacher at Cottonwood High School. Her family also owns and operates a farm in Cottonwood, Alabama.
Harrison Carter
Rising junior at Houston Academy in Dothan, Alabama. His family owns and operates LMC Manufacturing.
Welcome to Dothan, Alabama!
Dothan sits about five hours south of HudsonAlpha’s campus in Huntsville, right in the center of the Wiregrass, a region spanning southeast Alabama, southwest Georgia, and parts of the Florida panhandle. The name comes from the native long-stemmed grass Aristida stricta, commonly called wiregrass for its coarse texture. It once grew abundantly in the longleaf pine forests that covered the region.
Agriculture has always been big business in the Wiregrass region. Cotton once dominated the fields, but after the boll weevil devastated Southern crops in the early 1900s, the region found new hope in the peanut. Renowned scientist George Washington Carver’s innovative work in crop rotation and peanut cultivation helped Dothan’s economy rebound and cemented its identity as the Peanut Capital of the World.
Today, nearly half of all peanuts grown in the United States are grown within a 100-mile radius of Dothan. You’ll find reminders of that heritage everywhere. There are over 90 fiberglass peanut statues, painted to look like everything from a puppy to a police officer to the Chick-fil-A cow, all around town. Dothan is also home to our nation’s largest peanut festival, spanning two weeks in November each year.
Peanuts aren’t just a crop here; they’re a way of life.
Chris’s favorite fact: Dothan is also the Boiled Peanut Capital of the World. More about Chris’s love for boiled peanuts in future episodes!
The WIREGRASS Peanut Project
Launched in 2023 with four pilot school, the WIREGRASS Peanut Project has now growns to 14 schools and 17 teachers, engaging more than 1,000 students across the region.
At the heart of the project is experiential learning: students plant their own peanut seeds, nurture the seedlings, extract and analyze DNA from the leaves, and use that data to decide which peanut plants to cross for future generations. The decisions are carried forward in the next peanut crosses that are made in the greenhouse at HudsonAlpha in Huntsville (soon to be in the greenhouse at the Wiregrass Innovation Center).
The results go beyond education. Student‑generated data feed directly into Dr. Josh Clevenger’s ongoing research to create drought‑ and disease‑resistant peanuts for growers across the Southeast.
As you’ll hear in the episode, that’s a huge point of pride for students, knowing that something they do in class today could help farmers in the Wiregrass and beyond tomorrow. It’s also a powerful way to help them envision themselves as contributing members of the STEM community.
Behind-the-Scenes Photos
