Dr. Phillip Vines is an Assistant Professor of Turfgrass Breeding in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at the University of Georgia, based on the Griffin Campus. He is a passionate and driven plant breeder whose primary goal is to develop improved seed-propagated turfgrass cultivars for use on home lawns, recreational fields, athletic facilities, and golf courses around the world.

His breeding efforts focus on traits such as disease resistance, stress tolerance (including drought, heat, and salinity), reduced input requirements, and enhanced turf quality. His research also emphasizes the integration of advanced tools and technologies into traditional breeding methods. These include classical genetics, genomics-assisted selection, and high-throughput phenotyping, which together form the foundation of a modern, efficient turfgrass breeding program.

Originally from Mississippi, Vines earned a B.S. in Agronomy and an M.S. in Plant Pathology from Mississippi State University. He later completed a Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and a second M.S. in Statistics at Rutgers University, where he became deeply interested in using technology and data-driven approaches to enhance plant breeding.

Vines now lives in Fayetteville, Georgia, with his wife Elizabeth, a middle school math teacher, and two young children, James and Emmy. Outside of work, he enjoy spending time outdoors golfing, biking, hunting, or fishing, though not getting to do those as often as he’d like. Most of his free time is spent with his family, and that time is what he values most.