Lab people
Joe Shail, Research Support Specialist
BS Biology. Western Connecticut State UniversityMS Biology, SUNY at Geneseo
Joe brings long and diverse experience to the program. He has expertise in plant genetics and breeding, as well as virology. He was previously instrumental in the development of the first triple virus resistant squash. His advanced horticultural expertise is essential for our research that advances the state of the art in horticultural practice. Joe's current research is primarily on broccoli genetics and developing new cover crop practices for vegetable growers.
Fatima Mastouri, Ph.D student
BS Horticulture, University of Tehran
MS Horticulture, Tarbiat Modarres University
Fatima
worked in seed and horticultural import and distribution in the
Mideast. She came to Cornell to learn how to develop advanced
agricultural technologies for that region. One of the products her
company carried was a biocontrol fungus developed in this department,
and that fungus is the focus of her doctoral research. She is working
to discover the mechanism whereby the biocontrol fungus Trichoderma harzianum
accelerates seed germination She hopes to develop the potential of this
phenomenon to improve seedling vigor and stand establishment, and to
improve compromised seed lots. She is co-Advised by Prof. Gary Harman. Past students
Denise Duclos, Ph.D. 2007
Denise
came to Cornell from Chile with a degree
in horticulture from the Universidad Catolica de
Valparaiso, managment experience in the Chilean horticultural
industry, and a master's degree in biotechnology from the University of
Jerusalem. At Cornell, she investigated the transition from
inflorescence meristem to floral bud in broccoli and cauliflower. She
used functional genomics to discern the different roles among a group
of homeotic flower genes
that are the result of relatively recent duplication. One of the genes,
CAULIFLOWER,
was previously thought to determine whether heads
would resemble broccoli or cauliflower. Surprisingly, this gene was
shown both by genetics and gene expression to be unimportant in several
genotypes. For her work, she was awarded the
McClintock award for excellence in plant science. Denise is currently a postdoctoral associate at the University of Arizona.
Lauren Garner, M.S. 1994
Lauren came to Cornell from the Tuskegee
Institute where she worked on plant development following her
undergraduate training at the College of William and Mary. At Cornell,
she investigated how touch and bending affect elongation in tomato
stems, determining how individual stimuli are integrated over time, and
developing a cheap, safe and effective technique that can be used by
small scale growers to prevent leggy transplants. After leaving
Cornell, Lauren developed the technique further at Horticulture
Research International, in Wellesbourne, UK, after which she got a
Ph.D. at the University of California at Riverside, investigating fruit
set and abortion in avocados. She is currently on the faculty at Cal Poly in
San Luis Obispo, training students bound for the burgeoning
horticultural industry of Southern California in avocado and citrus
production.Dimuth Siritunga, BS 1994 (Hobart College)
Dimuth did his student research in the lab as an
undergraduate at Hobart College in Geneva, studying the genetics of an
interspecific cross of buckwheat. His interest in crop improvement came
in part from his family's involvement in the Sri Lankan tea industry.
He developed a technique to use molecular markers to distinguish hybrid
progeny from maternal progeny in a cross between a relatively
homozygous species and a highly heterozygous one. This effort resulted
in the first successful cross of these two species. He went
on to do an MS and a PhD at Ohio State University, breeding cassava. He
remains in the forefront of cassava research in the Biology
Department at the University of Puerto Rico, where he is a
professor doing metabolic engineering to reduce the
concentration of toxic cyanogenic glucosides in this important tropical
crop. 