Cultivating Futures: A Discussion with New Podcast Co-Host Curt Rom

We usher in a new era of the Plants People Science podcast with Curt Rom of the University of Arkansas joining Sam Humphrey as a Co-Host for Season 2. Rom's wealth of knowledge, from his roots as an undergraduate research assistant to his career in teaching and research, is set to invigorate our discussions with fresh insights. This episode introduces Curt with a discussion of his academic journey and explores his work and his contributions to the American Society for Horticultural Science.

Learn more about the American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) at https://ashs.org/.
HortTechnology, HortScience and the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science are all open-access and peer-reviewed journals, published by the American Society of Horticultural Science (ASHS). Find them at journals.ashs.org.

Consider becoming an ASHS member at https://ashs.org/page/Becomeamember!

You can also find the official webpage for Plants, People, Science at ashs.org/plantspeoplesciencepodcast, and we encourage you to send us feedback or suggestions at https://ashs.org/webinarpodcastsuggestion.

Podcast transcripts are available at https://plantspeoplescience.buzzsprout.com.

On LinkedIn find Sam Humphrey at linkedin.com/in/samson-humphrey. Curt Rom is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/curt-rom-611085134/. Lena Wilson is at https://www.linkedin.com/in/lena-wilson-2531a5141/.

Thank you for listening!

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Transcript

Sam Humphrey: 0:12

Hello, welcome to Plants People Science, a podcast by the American Society for Horticultural Science where we talk about all things horticulture. Today is a very special short episode because I'll be introducing someone who's been on the podcast team for a while now behind the scenes and who's now stepping into the role of being my co-host, kurt Roem. Welcome to the podcast.

Curt Rom: 0:34

Good morning Sam. It's nice to be here.

Sam Humphrey: 0:38

Could you take a minute to introduce yourself?

Curt Rom: 0:40

Sure, it's a delight to introduce myself. As you said, I'm Curt Rom. I'm a professor of horticulture at the University of Arkansas and the Department of Horticulture. I've been here a faculty member for 35 years and I've been a teaching and research horticulturist for about 40 plus years 41 years.

Sam Humphrey: 1:02

What has your career been like? You've done teaching and research, but you've also done administration right.

Curt Rom: 1:08

Well, I have. My horticulture career started as an undergraduate student. I was hired by the horticulture department to be an undergraduate research assistant and that stimulated my interest in research. I went to graduate school at Ohio State University and actually I was hired as an instructor there to teach freshman introduction to horticulture and introduction to fruit production classes. My first career job upon completing my PhD at the Ohio State University was at Washington State University. That's where my first tenure was worked on. Then, after five years, I was offered a position back at my alma mater at the University of Arkansas, where I received my bachelor's degree. I came back and I've been here since 1989. It's been. Originally it was largely a research appointment and then it became largely a teaching appointment. Currently my appointment is essentially 50-50 teaching and research.

Sam Humphrey: 2:09

You do fruit research.

Curt Rom: 2:10

You say yes, I am a trained pomologist or fruit scientist. My training and background was in fruit eco-physiology, so how the environment affects plant performance and how we can manage that. My sub-topics would have been fruit genetics and breeding and statistics. When I was at Washington State University I was focused on apple and cherry production, particularly environmental physiology and how we can manage cherry and apple trees. When I came to Arkansas I had an apple breeding program and an apple and peach management and physiology program. The apple breeding program was closed administratively in 1997.

Curt Rom: 2:58

I switched into sustainable and organic fruit production. That led me to small farm systems, integrated farm systems, farm to school, farmer's market production. I worked in that area. Then I had a stint of about 13 or 14 years in administration, including being the director of the honors program for my college, then interim dean of the university honors college. Then I became associate dean for international education. At that time we moved all international education programs into the graduate school. I was the first dean for international education. For a couple of years I was the interim dean of the graduate school. Now, june 1st, I've returned to 100% horticulture. I like to say my horticultural roots.

Sam Humphrey: 3:58

Congratulations on that change.

Curt Rom: 4:01

Well, thanks, I'm really excited about it. It's good to be back among my horticultural colleagues and among students.

Sam Humphrey: 4:09

I am really delighted to know you, because our work is so different and our perspectives are so different. You've had this wonderful long career and I'm still, you know, in my master's, I'm still in the first few years of working in horticulture and it strikes me that I wouldn't know you if it weren't for the American Society for Horticultural Science. But I've only been a member for, I think, three years, three and a half years now. What's your history with ASHS been like?

Curt Rom: 4:39

Well, I joined the ASHS, like you, when I became a master's student, so that was in 1980. And so I have attended 44 annual conferences. So it is my career society and my discipline society. I'm very excited about it and you know, and that's one of the great things about the American Society for Horticultural Science it brings us all together. Horticulture is so broad, in so many vast disciplines, that we tend to work in silos, discipline silos and the annual conference and our publications create new networks for us and gives us a chance to meet. So I'm delighted to meet you and Sam. Sometimes I don't feel much different than you. Having been in administration for 14 years and now returning to start up a research and teaching program, I feel like a beginning master's student too, and it's kind of exciting, but I also understand maybe a little bit intimidating.

Sam Humphrey: 5:40

See, my PI tells me that this is the fun part, that I can step back and I can really, you know, read about sensors and read about plants in a way that maybe he doesn't get to do now that he's a PI. How does it feel returning back to the nitty gritty of research?

Curt Rom: 5:59

Well, you know, again I feel like a beginning master's student. So I came back on June 1st and I spent much of the summer catching up on the literature, getting back to understand the cutting edge of issues related to fruit production and fruit physiology and eco-physiology, and also then looking at new alternative crops. So that's been quite a bit of fun.

Sam Humphrey: 6:27

Yeah, I'm really appreciative too that you've stayed working on and committed to this podcast even despite this really big life change of yours and all the exciting things you have going on with your career. So I'm wondering what got you interested in the plants people science podcast?

Curt Rom: 6:47

Well, like many people have probably listened to this podcast. I'm a podcast listener and I find that I can listen to podcasts when I'm doing other things. Particularly, I'm a hobby gardener. I spend most of my time in yard work and gardening, both ornamental gardening as well as vegetable gardening and so I listened to podcasts and I thought well, that's a very interesting way for us to communicate our science. So for the ASHS, you know we have mostly communicated our science through our three journal publications. I thought that the podcast would be another way for us to talk about science and really the people behind the horticultural science. So that's what stimulated my interest. I thought that there was a niche that plant people science podcast could fill, and I think that the podcast is filling that niche. It's very informative, it's very fun and enjoyable as well as knowledgeable.

Sam Humphrey: 7:51

Yeah, there's always room for more outreach. There's always room to invite students into the world of horticulture, even if there are just listeners in general, inviting listeners into the world of horticulture even if they're not already involved. I did have one final question for you. I'm curious about what you're hopeful for.

Curt Rom: 8:14

Well, you know, I'm a hopeful, optimistic person. Sometimes people call me the the biggest optimist in the room, but I'm a pragmatic optimist. I think that there's a lot of new opportunity for us to address issues, two big issues and then their kind of sustainability goals. One would be improving people's life, in lifestyle, with better foods and food systems, more nutritious food and access to food, and since I work in the food crop sector, I think that we have a lot of work to do to make food nutritious, high quality, affordable and accessible to people. So making food quality, making quality food, nutritious food accessible is, I think, something I'm very optimistic that we can address through our science. The other area, since I'm an environmental physiologist, I'm very interested in climate change and the impact that climate change is making on our production systems, and that would be food production systems, as well as our ornamental landscape systems and the systems that we have that make our world more livable and more attractive.

Curt Rom: 9:32

What I'm hopeful about is that science, or horticultural science, science for specialty crops, will embrace these challenges and move forward with new discoveries, new innovations, new technologies. I'm particularly interested in the application of biometrics and physiometrics, plant biometrics and the applications and use of artificial intelligence to help us address questions in real time and to make better predictable use for our production systems. So that's really exciting stuff to me, and all of those are going to be science questions, technology questions, and science and technology does not happen without people, and so I'm really excited about your generation, sam, and the young scientists I see coming up behind us, because I think they understand the world in a way. Sometimes maybe my generation doesn't and you see things differently and I'm optimistic about that. So I'm optimistic and I'm excited about it.

Sam Humphrey: 10:41

That is one of the things I love when talking to you is hearing the optimism in your voice and in the way you do research and the way you teach. I am struck by how much there is to be hopeful for even when the world feels complicated and hopeless sometimes. I think there's a lot to be excited about in horticulture and a lot to be hopeful for, so thank you for sharing that with us and for our listeners. There is a lot to be excited about in terms of episodes coming up. Kurt is working on a mini series called Failure is Not Final. Kurt, do you want to tell us a little bit about that?

Curt Rom: 11:22

Well, you know, one of the things that I've learned in my years as a scientist is that about half my ideas are not very good and of the half that I can actually activate and actuate, I've had failures. Some of the failures have been beyond my control. They've been environmental failures, hailstorms, late frosts, electrical failures in the greenhouse, power outages. At one time I was starting some seedlings and I went in the next day and obviously a mouse or a rat had eaten most of those things. You know we don't publish failures, we only publish our successes.

Curt Rom: 12:03

But I think behind all of those success stories there's some interesting failure, because we learn along the way and it revises how we think and how we develop our plans and as a result, particularly in the horticulture disciplines, I think failure makes us more resilient.

Curt Rom: 12:23

We have to think what are we going to do now to prevent that from happening again? Or I had a failed experiment and it turned out that I had this hypothesis I had four treatments and nothing happened. Everything was the same, and of course you can't publish that. But as horticulturists and part of being a horticulturist is not only the statistical knowledge that we gain from things, but the observational knowledge and so I believe that we learn through failure, and so that's where I kind of came up with the idea that failure is not final. We learn from it, we move on, and that's demonstrated resilience, and so I'd like to tell some of those stories. I'm excited about how people have failed, especially who's willing to admit it, because we don't like to say, oh yeah, I failed, but I think there's some interesting stories there, so I look forward to listeners that might have a story to tell about failure resilience, followed by success.

Sam Humphrey: 13:28

Yeah, that's a good call out, because I actually hadn't remembered this one preparing for this episode. But we have a link on the ASHS website where listeners can submit their email and submit a little note saying that they're interested in being interviewed for the podcast, especially for those failure episodes. Failure is not final. We're really excited to hear from ASHS members about that.

Curt Rom: 13:57

Yeah, and again, that humanizes our science and I think that that's an important part. Part of my inspiration about our podcast and why I think it's wonderful is we talk about it from a human level and that's just different than reading it in the journals with tables and graphs and statistics that there's actually a person or teams of people that are doing this kind of innovation and discovery and entrepreneurship, and so I like to hear those stories of the people behind the science and the plants that we talk about.

Sam Humphrey: 14:34

Yeah, speaking of the people, I'm just so thrilled that you're a part of this podcast, Kurt, and I'm excited for our listeners to learn more about you and to hear your voice again in future episodes To our listeners. If you'd like more information about the American Society for Horticultural Science in general, you can go to ashsorg. Thank you for joining us and thank you, Kurt, for the wonderful interview.

Curt Rom: 15:02

Thank you, sam, it was delightful. I look forward to being your co-host. Have a good day you as well. Thank you.