I’m not going to hoedown on schedule this week because most of what I’m learning at Famous Wholesale Nursery is how to tolerate abject misery. It’s hot, my feet hurt, and my enthusiasm is waning. Nevertheless, on I trudge. I keep thinking wistfully about people who intern in offices and stay cool all day. But I can also picture the slot on my resume with this summer’s experience.
My stint in the research section of the nursery has extended into extra days here and there, and for this I am most grateful. I owe my mentor at school for preparing me with bench techniques and knowledge of conversions which have set the stage for my being invited back. Really, I should send him a fruit basket or something. Working with the cool burn of liquid nitrogen is far preferable to being bent over all day pruning 1-gallon Echinacea or removing by hand the liverwort from 3,000 tiny Lilacs.
Yesterday I learned DNA extraction and ELISA testing for Phytophthora and Pythium. I have a new respect for how long DNA testing takes: the extraction alone, with sample prep, incubation time, spinning and changing substrates, took over 6 hours. That doesn’t even include the PCR or sequencing that will have to wait until next week (when I will hopefully be invited back again). The ELISA testing was also no slouch, taking about 4 hours to incubate and finally win my bet: the orchid die back was Pythium which was my guess going in.
The person I work with in the lab likes to bet what results will be before we run tests. “What do you think the fresh weight to dry weight ratio will be?” “Which of these samples do you think will test positive for Phytophthora?” “I know what the leaching fraction will be – want to bet me?” I have generally been losing these bets with my very limited experience in these matters, so my Pythium bet was a sweet win. Pythium really does have a distinct appearance, like a tiny mower came in and bit off all your plants at the soil level, leaving the stems black and water logged. For once, I knew what it was as soon as I saw the plants.
In school, we are told over and over how the measure of your competence as a horticulturist will be made by the accuracy of your diagnoses. This is alarming, because any one symptom can be representative of a number of different things. Take yellow, burnt looking leaves. That could be nutrient deficiency, nutrient toxicity, wilt, overwatering, salt burn, sun burn, chemical burn, fungus, insect, virus, bacterial infection, chilling injury. Granted you have some hints in what the weather has been like, what the cultural conditions are, and knowledge of the plant and the area, but suffice it to say, it’s difficult to pinpoint a novel crop problem at a glance. The methodical approach works, but it takes some time. And time wise, it’s not terribly efficient to do bioassays and gene sequencing every time you have a problem.
That’s time I have though: I’d be happy to work in the lab every day until my last day at Famous Wholesale Nursery. I’ve laid some heavy hints. We’ll see if it flies.
On the one hand, I want field season to start up again, like today. On the other, I still have so many specimens to process, so much data to analyze, so many journal articles to read, I could actually skip spring and summer this year and be busy for the next 12 months.
