John Ertle: Behind the Scenes at the 2022 ASHS Far-Red Workshop

What if the key to unlocking your garden's full potential lies in a light spectrum most people overlook? Discover the untapped power of far-red radiation in horticulture as we bring you a vibrant discussion straight from the ASHS 2022 Workshop, "What Is Far-Red Light's Role in Plant Science?" Join co-host Sam Humphrey in a fantastic conversation with Dr. John Ertle, who shares his firsthand experience being surrounded by the leading minds in plant science. Feel the buzz and excitement of a packed room where every corner was brimming with curiosity and groundbreaking insights.

In this episode, John Ertle recounts his journey from a master's project on vegetable grafting to engaging with top scientists about the nuances of far-red light. From the thrill of securing a seat behind the renowned Bruce Bugbee to the dynamic, open discussions among students and professors alike, John paints a vivid picture of the workshop's atmosphere. Listen as we uncover how this relatively obscure topic is making waves in controlled environment agriculture. This episode promises a front-row seat to the complexities and possibilities that far-red radiation holds for the future of horticulture.

ASHS 2022 Workshop What Is Far-Red Light's Role in Plant Science? https://ashs.confex.com/ashs/2022/meetingapp.cgi/Session/11349

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.

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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

Curt Rom: 0:17

Welcome to Plants, people Science, a podcast of the American Society for Horticultural Science where we talk about all things horticulture. I'm Curt Rom from the University of Arkansas, your co-host for the podcast, along with co-host Samson Humphrey from North Carolina State University. So, Sam, what brings us together today?

Samson Humphrey: 0:39

In our last episode we talked with Dr Eric Runkle about far-red radiation and how it affects plants. It was a very science-focused episode from this researcher who's super knowledgeable and has been researching far-red for decades now. But we wanted to add a little bit of color. What was it like to be a graduate student in the room during that famous ASHS far-red workshop? So I sat down with John Ertle and we discussed Far Red and his experience being there in the room with all those important scientists for this really important discussion.

Curt Rom: 1:15

Well, Sam, I look forward to hearing the color in the conversation about Far Red Light.

Samson Humphrey: 1:25

John Ertle. Dr John Ertle, welcome to the podcast. Well, thank you very much, Sam. So we invited you to come on the show and talk about Far Red because you were one of the students present in the workshop about Far Red Light at the 2022 ASHS conference. I'm curious why were you there? Why did you attend the workshop?

John Ertle: 1:46

Yeah, so at that particular conference I went to present some of my research PhD research at the time and I was fortunate enough to see that everybody was migrating into this Far Red workshop and I was curious about it and I'd heard a lot about Far Red lately, and so I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and got to step in for that very lively discussion.

Samson Humphrey: 2:12

Oh, that's amazing. So you were a controlled environment researcher at the time, right?

John Ertle: 2:18

Yeah, so I was in Chieri Kubota's lab at the Ohio State University. I joined her lab in 2018 for a master's, which I first worked on vegetable grafting so fruiting vegetable crops and stress tolerance and then, once I was finished with that project the end of my master's I stuck around to do a PhD with Cherry on her Optimia grant, which was a multi-state Optimia grant, which was a multi-state, multi-institute grant to improve leafy green profitability and crop physiology inside of controlled environments. And so I worked on tip burn. So I got to look at lettuce as it was growing in these controlled environments and see this calcium deficiency emerge in the leaves that causes this poor appearance and marketability and limits the crop growth. So I got to work very deeply in that field and growing exclusively in controlled environments for a long period of time.

Samson Humphrey: 3:20

I mean from how I understand it. So you and I have been friends for a couple of years now and in my mind you're the guy who was helping everyone out, who was helping with other projects and who was very knowledgeable on lots of topics, including light of your PhD, who's very knowledgeable about many of these topics, especially light. What was it like walking into this room of scientists and students and industry members? What was it like to actually be there?

John Ertle: 3:54

Well, it was actually really exciting. So the room was packed. It was standing room only in the back. I was fortunate enough to get a seat just behind Bruce Bugbee, which was always fun, and the group was kind of excited talking about the idea of far-red photons and how they interact with plants and the physiology, and so the group was kind of mixture of students all the way to, you know, tenured professors, and, and no real separation between any of the groups, and so it was just kind of like this, you know, exciting atmosphere of everybody in this field, interested in, this, what would have been relatively obscure topic to the, to the general public, but we were all there to learn and it was really exciting to sit in that room with so many knowledgeable people also doing the same thing.

Samson Humphrey: 4:53

Yeah, those rooms could hold, I think, like 80 or so people. So if you're standing in the back, they were quite a big number.

John Ertle: 5:00

It was quite challenging to squeeze everyone in, but it was real cool to see everybody stick around to the end of the day for that meeting.

Samson Humphrey: 5:18

The format of this workshop had some speakers right and then there was like an open discussion with people talking and asking questions. Did any students get to ask questions?

John Ertle: 5:25

Yeah, and I vaguely remember asking one at some point myself, but I can't remember for the life of me what it was. But there were quite a few students asking questions and just as many professors, and sometimes you go to these meetings and you know you get kind of a few questions volleyed at you, but this just seemed like nonstop, like the discussion portion of this was going all day and you know speakers were still up there getting ready to answer questions through the end of that. That worked up and a little bit beyond, I think so. But everybody was asking questions and there are lots of little discussions, side discussions, at tables too.

Samson Humphrey: 6:04

Oh really, I didn't know there were side discussions. That's so I like. Yeah, when I attend conferences, typically I'm attending, you know, talks and someone speaks and people ask questions, but it's not as lively usually as this one sounds. That's so funny. I'm curious. What did you learn from the experience?

John Ertle: 6:31

So I learned a lot about how, you know, these far-red photons are interacting with the plants and gas exchange of these crops, and how that light, in addition to par photons, would interact with the plant versus far-red light by itself or just par photons by themselves.

John Ertle: 6:53

And we kind of just started building the logical case that far red can be photosynthetically active in conditions around the leaf and around the plants. And there was some really really really good data presented about, you know, demonstrating that effect. And then discussion even going back further to older literature where this was kind of loosely talked about but also broadly ignored by the scientific community for a while, and there were, you know kind of some experiments that led to the conclusion that you know, this is not directly that valuable, because when we shine just far red light on these plants, nothing really happens, but missing that critical component of adding in PAR photons. And so then we kind of were able to reconstruct the arguments leading to why that topic was sort of shelled for a while. And then now what new evidence there is to bring that into a new light, for lack of a better, less ironic term, a new radiation, yes, well a new light for lack of a better less ironic term A new radiation.

Samson Humphrey: 8:07

That's so interesting because most talks are. You know, this is what I'm currently doing, but not going so deeply into the history. That sounds incredible.

John Ertle: 8:12

Yeah, there are some professors in our field and other individuals that are really good at this, like Bruce Bugbee obviously, will get up and he'll talk about the history of lighting and for 10 minutes or so it's just like a fascinating kind of dive into what we thought the limits were of controlled environments based around lighting based around lighting. And it's really cool to kind of mix in that history with the science, because I think that gives it a sort of extra oomph in how we look at the scientific process and why we have differing conclusions at differing times throughout history about certain topics. But we can kind of, you know, come to new understanding about that information.

Samson Humphrey: 9:02

Yeah, wow. So it's funny to me that now you so you're talking about how far red can increase and can affect photosynthesis and other physiological processes, and now that is what you do. Since that workshop you've graduated with your PhD and you've been hired as a plant physiologist at PP Systems. So for our listeners, that is a company that designs and manufactures state-of-the-art portable photosynthesis systems. So you've taken all of your experiences publishing and discussing science at ASHS conferences and you've started the next chapter of your scientific career. That's right. I'm curious what are you up to right now?

John Ertle: 9:48

Yeah, so, um, uh, today actually looks very similar to a day in my PhD. I'm currently running a lighting experiment just to look at some interesting effects, on interesting effects on some plants that I have growing in my office, and then I'm also, this afternoon, going to go down and start working on a new project that we just picked up. So just in the last few weeks I acquired a shipping container vertical farm, and so now I'm going to greatly expand my plant growing capacity as I start to kind of build the lab capable of doing research here, and we're very excited to see that next chapter open up.

Samson Humphrey: 10:30

What sort of research do you want to do? Will it be lighting research in that shipping container farm?

John Ertle: 10:35

Well, I think lighting research is sort of an easy fruit to start grabbing at in the early days here. There are some other experiments I'd like to do, but there may be some creative sort of approaches to that. And as far as proving out that, you know, our container works as we need it to, I'll probably start with doing some kind of lighting experiment and I'd like to look at far red specifically to see what kind of physiological data I can gather about these crops throughout their life cycle.

Samson Humphrey: 11:11

There are so many things to be excited about in horticulture, so many different like topics and little areas that you can be creative in and that you can ask questions about. So, as a student, seeing you actually like getting funding and getting facilities and starting to create your own research program at this company, it's really exciting to see.

John Ertle: 11:37

Yes, it is a very creative process on the industry side sometimes. So, even getting this container, we were exploring options about different controlled environment setups we could build here, or what things we could purchase and equipment we needed, and the cost started to total very high very quickly. So in this case I was able to find a rather unique opportunity to buy this equipment. So there was a company that went out of business and they liquidated their holdings. I was able to purchase this chamber in their auction aftermath, so that worked out very well for me. But still there's a lot more we could do and so I'm going to try and continue channeling that creativity and growing this side of the business.

Samson Humphrey: 12:30

John Ertle. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was fantastic.

John Ertle: 12:34

It was great to talk to you. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Curt Rom: 12:46

The ASHS podcast Plants, People, Science is made possible by member dues and volunteerism. Science is made possible by member dues and volunteerism. Please go to ashs. org to learn more. If you're not already a member of the ASHS, we invite you to join. ASHS is a not-for-profit and your donations are tax-deductible.

Samson Humphrey: 13:09

This episode was hosted by Samson Curt Rom and . Special thanks to our audio engineer, A andrew Scheldorf, our research specialists Lena Wilson and Andrew Scheldorf, our ASHS support team, S ara Powell and Sally Murphy, and our musician, J ohn Clark. Thanks for listening. Guitar solo. Thank you.