Drought and the Microbiome: Advancements in Agriculture

Berkeley Scientific: the journal of young scientists

article

Shevya Awasthi ; Doyel Das ; Emily Harari ; Ananya Krishnapura ; Erika Zhang ; Rosa Lee

关键词: Drought;    Microbiome;    Soil Microbiome;    Sorghum;    Agriculture;    Epigenetics;    qPCR;    Actinobacteria;   

DOI  :  10.5070/BS3241046910

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: University of California, Berkeley

【 摘 要 】

PGL: I grew up on a farm in northwestern Ohio,so I understood how hard it is to producefood. Because of the hard work, I wanted to get as faraway from the farm as possible. My brothers were bothengineers. I also wanted to be an engineer, but my highschool advisor said, "Oh, a lot of hard math; women can'thandle that,” and he actually directed me to home economics. I was a home economics major for two years, butthen I was given a biochemistry book, and it was verythin. I thought, "This is not right. I know there's more tobiochemistry than that." So, I switched over and becamea microbiology major. My idea was that I wanted to helppeople, so I got my undergraduate, master’s, and PhDdegrees in microbiology, with an eye toward improvingpeople’s health. For my first postdoc, I was at the StanfordMedical School, and I got to see those efforts firsthand.It was not the altruistic approach that I had envisioned.However, walking around on the campus, I stumbledupon the Carnegie Institution, which focused on plant biology research. I made the switch and have never lookedback. Having a background on the farm, I have alwaysappreciated the difficulties of producing enough food—especially with the challenges of population expansionand climate change. I imagined what I could do in agriculture with what I learned in my first postdoc aboutgenetic engineering technology. That is why I took thisposition at Cal—to try to help agriculture in California.

【 授权许可】

Unknown