Great Grapes with Artificial Selection

Hello my name is Anne. I am a plant physiologist that works with grapes. When filling out my application for college I didn’t know what to put in the major box. I was thinking maybe biology and chemistry. Then I asked my brother, who had just gotten a degree in biology, what he thought. He said “you like plants, why not put Horticulture, you can always change majors if it doesn’t fit”. I put Horticulture in the application and it stuck. I continued in Horticulture and became interested in research while working for different plant breeders (strawberries and small grains) at Iowa State University. I went to graduate school at the University of Minnesota to study plant tolerance of low temperature stress and discovered plant physiology, which is all about how plants work. As a Horticulturist, I worked with plants directly used by humans: potatoes, spinach, strawberries, raspberries, grapes and apples. As a Plant Physiologist I bring to bear any tool that can help me understand how plants, grapes in particular, tolerate temperature and water stress. I have continued to acquire tools/knowledge with the changing needs of my studies, incorporating chemistry, plant biology, genetic, genomic and bioinformatic tools and techniques to better understand how plants function. I go from the field, to the DNA or RNA in the lab, back to the field, asking questions and testing answers in real conditions. I still “like plants” and I am fascinated by how we can use knowledge of plant responses to environmental stresses as tools for selection of new plants that are disease, insect or environmental stress tolerant.