---
title: "Plant Breeder"
description: "Develops new crop varieties with higher yield, disease resistance or better quality using genetics and field trials."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/plant-breeder"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Plant Breeder

**Category:** Life, Physical, and Social Science · **SOC code:** 19-1013 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 19-1013.00

Develops new crop varieties with higher yield, disease resistance or better quality using genetics and field trials.

Also advertised as: Crop Breeder; Plant Breeding Scientist; Corn Breeder; Vegetable Breeder; Plant Geneticist.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $78,850 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $37.91/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $48,680 to $138,120, with the middle half between $61,660 and $103,740
- **Total US employment:** 15,730
- **Typical entry education:** Doctorate
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +6.7% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 1,400 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 41/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 15,730 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $48,680 |
| 25th | $61,660 |
| 50th (median) | $78,850 |
| 75th | $103,740 |
| 90th | $138,120 |
| Mean (average) | $87,720 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $107,140 | $97,488 | 60 |
| FL | $103,240 | $99,832 | 270 |
| AK | $100,320 | $98,008 | 30 |
| IA | $96,310 | $109,740 | 960 |
| ID | $95,150 | $99,640 | 540 |
| NJ | $91,970 | $84,527 | 130 |
| CA | $91,930 | $83,029 | 1,440 |
| OR | $85,150 | $82,381 | 620 |
| MD | $85,020 | $81,003 | 200 |
| HI | $84,390 | $76,752 | 60 |
| AZ | $83,840 | $83,276 | 270 |
| IN | $80,030 | $85,750 | 440 |
| WA | $79,970 | $74,729 | 520 |
| MN | $79,610 | $80,723 | 750 |
| IL | $79,490 | $79,523 | 820 |

32 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 47 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/plant-breeder/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/plant-breeder.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 19,900 in the 2025–2035 base year to 21,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 1,300 jobs, or +6.7%. Faster than average: 6.7% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 1,400 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Doctoral or professional degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Master's Degree | 28.6% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 23.8% |
| Doctoral Degree | 19.1% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 4.8% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 4.8% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 4.8% |

## What the work involves

- Select parent lines and plan crosses
- Make controlled pollinations in the field and greenhouse
- Evaluate breeding lines in multi-location trials
- Use genetic markers and genomic data to select lines
- Analyze trial data for yield and trait performance
- Decide which varieties advance toward commercial release
- Coordinate with pathologists, seed production and product teams

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Analysis — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Biology — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Chemistry — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Investigative (I), Realistic (R), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| I — Investigative | 6.71 |
| R — Realistic | 6.43 |
| C — Conventional | 4.04 |
| A — Artistic | 2.11 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.71 |
| S — Social | 1.67 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTP | 85.1 |
| INTJ | 84.2 |
| ISTJ | 82.6 |
| INTP | 73.3 |
| ISFJ | 56.9 |

Best-fitting types: ISTP, INTJ, ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Soil and Plant Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/soil-and-plant-scientist) — median $78,850
- [Conservation Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/conservation-scientist) — median $73,010
- [Precision Agriculture Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/precision-agriculture-technician) — median $49,630
- [Industrial Ecologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-ecologist) — median $82,220
- [Microbiologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/microbiologist) — median $87,990
- [Agricultural Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/agricultural-engineer) — median $98,590
- [Biologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/biologist) — median $98,920
- [Geoscientist, Except Hydrologists and Geographers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/geoscientist) — median $101,920
- [Range Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/range-manager) — median $73,010
- [Hydrologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/hydrologist) — median $96,600

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/plant-breeder