| title | order |
|---|---|
research |
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I am interested in international agriculture and rural development with a focus on breeding for improved nutritional quality. I want to empower resource-limited plant breeding programs through the development and deployment of appropriate and user-friendly tools for data capture, storage, and reproducible analyses.
<h3 class="major">Vegetable breeding at Clemson's Pee Dee Research & Education Center</h3>
<p>Housed at <a href="https://www.clemson.edu/cafls/research/peedee/index.html">Clemson's Pee Dee Research & Education Center</a> in Florence, South Carolina, my research group is focused on breeding vegetables with improved flavor and nutritional value for the region. Read more about our work on our <a href="https://hershlab.org">lab website</a>.
<h3 class="major">Phenomic selection for domestication of new perennial crops</h3>
<p><a href="https://foundationfar.org/news/ffar-grant-speeds-domestication-of-sustainable-crops/">This project</a>, funded by the <a href="https://foundationfar.org/">Foundation for Food & Agriculture</a>, seeks to speed up the domestication process for three potential perennial crops: Silphium, sainfoin, and intermediate wheatgrass (Kernza).
<h3 class="major">PhenoApps</h3>
<p>The <a href="https://phenoapps.org">PhenoApps</a> project is focused on the development of Android apps for the efficient collection of plant phenotypes. Our open-source apps are available for free on <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=9194692563580469241">Google Play</a> and the source code can be found on <a href="https://github.com/PhenoApps">GitHub</a>. Throughout the project, I have collaborated closely with <a href="https://www.nextgencassava.org/">Nextgen Cassava</a> to explore the use of low-cost near-infrared spectrometers for quality trait prediction in fresh cassava roots. This work led to the creation of a flexible spectral data analysis pipeline in the form of an R package (<i>waves</i>, <a href="https://cran.r-project.org/package=waves">available on CRAN</a>) and <a href="https://www.cassavabase.org/">Cassavabase</a> GUI tool. Both are described in our <a href ="https://doi.org/10.1002/ppj2.20012">recent peer-reviewed manscript in the Plant Phenome Journal</a>. Our team has also developed an Android app, <a href ="https://github.com/PhenoApps/Prospector">Prospector</a>, to improve spectrometer workflows for a breeding program context. We recently released a <a href ="https://arxiv.org/abs/2104.07071">preprint</a> on this work and it is also available on <a href ="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.phenoapps.prospector">Google Play</a>. This project is made possible by NSF-BREAD <a href="https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1543958">IOS-1543958</a> and the USAID under Cooperative Agreement No. 7200AA‐19LE‐00005, <a href ="https://ilci.cornell.edu">the Feed the Future Innovation lab for Crop Improvement</a>.</p>
<h3 class="major">Sweet corn nutritional quality</h3>
<p>In 2019, I was awarded a USDA NIFA AFRI EWD Predoctoral fellowship titled <i>Integrating transcriptomics for the improvement of genetic dissection and prediction of provitamin A and vitamin E in fresh sweet corn kernels</i>. Last summer, I grew out a panel of diverse sweet corn inbred lines and harvested fresh kernels for RNA-seq. RNA has been extracted and we're now analyzing the sequenced transcripts to study the control of carotenoid and tocochromanol traits through transcriptome-wide association and prediction.</p>
<h3 class="major">Carrot breeding and genetics</h3>
<p>During my time in the <a href="https://vcru.wisc.edu/simon/">Simon Lab</a> at UW-Madison, I worked on the first iteration of the USDA NIFA OREI <a href="https://eorganic.info/carrotimprovement/about"><i>Carrot Improvement for Organic Agriculture</i></a> project. I was involved in every stage of the carrot breeding program, from planting and cage building for fly pollination to DNA extraction, HPLC prep, and tissue culture, and loved every part of it. It's safe to say that my experience with the carrot group inspired me to pursue a graduate education in plant breeding and genetics. My family likes to joke that the true start of my career was my (single line) speaking part in a BigTen Network special on breeding carrots for color and flavor. Watch the video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZV2F4HjT8qM"><i>here</i></a> and judge for yourself! ⇩
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