GENEVA, NY - Thomas Björkman's taste for horticulture was evident as early as his seventh birthday. His mother put flowers on his cake. And he clearly remembers the golden fields of spring wildflowers on the serpentine grasslands above Palo Alto, most of which he knew by name.
"I've always known I wanted to study plants," said Björkman. The 38-year-old plant scientist achieves one of his life's goals on July 1, 1996, when his promotion to Associate Professor of Vegetable Crop Physiology in Cornell University's Horticultural Sciences Department at the Experiment Station in Geneva, becomes effective.
"Thomas joined the Department of Horticultural Sciences in July of 1990 with extensive graduate and post-doctorate experience in plant physiology," said department chairman Hugh Price. "Since then, he has effectively used this background to expand our understanding and control of vegetable production problems, such as fruit set in buckwheat, height control in tomato plug transplants, heat tolerance of broccoli, and plant growth response to Trichoderma colonization."
Björkman grew up in the city, but spent a lot of time in mountain and desert habitats with his father, a plant ecologist, and his mother, who coordinates the Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve in Stanford. "I've always found plants inherently interesting," said Björkman.
At the Experiment Station, Björkman's research involves the growth and development of vegetable crops and factors that affect both their productivity and quality. "I work closely with the scientists who are doing cultural practices and breeding. My job is to make sure that scientific principles we discover in plant physiology are put to use in the field, for the horticultural industry, and for everyone who wants to eat better vegetables," he said.
For instance, he recently completed a project to help tomato transplant growers prevent legginess in transplants without the use of chemicals. He also developed a screening method to select for heat-tolerant broccoli, on which he collaborated with Mike Dickson. A current focus is the enhancement of root growth and development on nearly all vegetables when the roots are colonized by Trichoderma , a beneficial fungus that was developed at the Experiment Station in the early '80s by Gary Harman.
"The teams of scientists at Geneva makes this kind of work really productive. I get a kick out of working in the kind of environment where you can do good science and see it matter right away," said Björkman. He also acknowledges the expertise of the 12 current and former members of his lab, and the Station field staff in making the progress recognized by this promotion.
When he first came to Geneva, Björkman admits his academic training had not prepared him to work with farmers. "It is wonderful to have a group that cares so much about your work. Good observation is the key to doing the right experiments in science. The growers I work with make valuable contributions with their keen observations, and they also provide a candid evaluation on the value of the results." Among other projects, he is now responsible for cooperative trials all over the state with farmers who grow fresh market and processing sweet corn.
"The purpose of those trials is to make sure we won't have any surprises with Trichoderma ," he said. Important variables are the different types of soil around the state and the soil management practices employed by different farmers. The biggest surprise so far is that there is a thousand-fold range in Trichoderma populations among New York State soils. "We need to know what it takes to keep this helpful fungus happy in the field."
Björkman is looking forward to investigating how root development affects crop growth so dramatically, and says there are a lot of ways to affect root growth that have been ignored or not understood well enough to use them to their fullest potential.
Björkman received an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from UC-Davis in 1979, and his PhD in Plant Physiology from Cornell at the Boyce Thompson Institute in 1986. He did a post-doc at the University of Washington in Seattle on Gravitational Biology, and came to the Experiment Station in 1990.
"For the last six years, my only important hobby has been to get tenure," said Björkman, who lives in East Varick with his wife Ann Raffetto. He says he misses the mountains, but notes the great thing about living in the Finger Lakes is you can own a little piece of woods and a gully and develop your own woodlands and wildlife habitat.
Björkman is also involved with bringing science to the schools with the Sigma Xi Partners in Science Education Program, coordinating scientists from the Experiment Station and Hobart William Smith to develop science projects in the local schools. "I want to make sure the same sorts of opportunities exist for kids as existed for me," he said. "I'm not sure that kids these days even take walks in the woods."
Contact: Linda McCandless
315-787-2417
e-mail: llm3@cornell.edu
Communications Services, Geneva, NY
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