Plants, People, Science

Hydrangea Genomics: Dr. Lisa Alexander's Path to Breeding Better Hydrangeas

• American Society for Horticultural Science (ASHS) • Season 3 • Episode 4

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The science behind your garden hydrangeas involves far more than just planting and watering. Dr. Lisa Alexander, a research geneticist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service, takes us on a fascinating journey from her first days pollinating chestnut trees in a 70-foot bucket truck to her current work revolutionizing hydrangea breeding at the National Arboretum.

Working from the heart of Tennessee's nursery country, Dr. Alexander explains how she's mapping the genetic diversity of oakleaf hydrangea across its six-state native range. Her team has identified six distinct genetic populations, some containing rare genes that might help plants survive drought or cold temperatures. This groundbreaking research comes at a critical time – they've discovered that urbanization has already caused these beautiful native plants to disappear from many previously recorded locations.

The economic stakes are significant. Hydrangeas represent a $155 million industry, ranking as the second best-selling woody shrub behind roses. By understanding the genetic blueprint controlling traits like plant size, flower structure, and environmental adaptations, breeders can develop improved varieties that combine beauty with resilience.

Dr. Alexander also discusses the exciting launch of "Hort Genomes" – a new initiative creating a dedicated home for specialty crop genomic data within the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science. This resource will accelerate research across horticultural fields by centralizing crucial genetic information previously scattered across publications or unavailable to the scientific community.

Whether you're a backyard gardener admiring your hydrangeas or a scientist breeding the next generation of ornamental plants, this episode reveals the remarkable intersection of traditional horticulture with cutting-edge genomics that's shaping the future of our gardens.

Read the JASHS article “Precipitation, Temperature, and Population Structure Influence Genetic Diversity of Oakleaf Hydrangea Throughout Its Native Range” at https://www.doi.org/10.21273/JASHS05255-22.



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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Curt Rom:

Welcome to Plants, people Science. A podcast of the American Society for Horticulture Science where we talk about all things horticulture.

Samson Humphrey:

I'm Samson Humphrey. I'm a PhD student researcher at the University of Tennessee and I'm one of your co-hosts.

Curt Rom:

Hi, samson, it's great to hear from you. I'm your other co-host, kurt Roem University, professor of Horticulture from the University of Arkansas. We'd like to welcome our audience today, samson. I'm so glad that they're joining us, because I think this is going to be a very interesting conversation.

Samson Humphrey:

I think so too. We're covering a couple of different topics. It's going to be an interesting one. Our guest today is ASHS member Dr Lisa Alexander, who's a research geneticist from the US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, that is, the USDA ARS, and she's associated with the National Arboretum. Let's give this interview a listen. Good morning, Dr Alexander. Thank you for joining us.

Lisa Alexander:

Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Samson Humphrey:

For our audience. Could you please introduce yourself?

Lisa Alexander:

My name is Dr Lisa Alexander. I'm a research geneticist and plant breeder with the US National Arboretum and I breed woody ornamental landscape plants to support the nursery industry.

Curt Rom:

So you know I really love the National Arboretum. It has a a wonderful history and it's great. But tell us how you became a horticulture plant science? There has to be a story behind the science.

Lisa Alexander:

Well, there is. I like to say. One of the best parts about horticulture is horticulture people, because they all have a story of how they got here, and mine is that I have always been interested in the outdoors, hiking, camping, learning about ecosystems. After high school I thought I wanted to work on policy and planning as it related to land use. Well, as part of my college's honor program, I went to University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. One summer. I had to choose a professor for an independent research project. So you know, the bat guy was a little weird and the fish guy I just don't like. Getting wet and trapping mammals was a no for me. So I met a professor named Dr Hill Craddock who was pollinating wild chestnut trees to make disease resistant hybrids, and so that all seemed clean and neat and interesting and I got to go outside. So I went out with them. And the very first day that I was out with the group, we show up to this tree and there's like this huge 70 foot bucket truck standing there and everybody kind of standing around looking at each other like who's going up, and then they all sort of looked at me. So I went up. Hopefully I was clipped in, but I had this apron with jars of pollen and little brushes and a little notebook and pen. And the first time I cut back leaves to reveal the chestnut tree flower and I pollinated it and replaced the bag up in the canopy overlooking the tree line. I was hooked. I was hooked on plant breeding, on genetics, on chestnut trees, and never looked back.

Lisa Alexander:

And I do want to take a second to mention the role that ASHS played in my journey to being a horticultural scientist. My advisor, dr Craddock, took a group of us to a regional ASHS meeting one year. I was an undergrad, it was my first meeting and I remember all the professors, all the important people sitting at a round table talking about some topic and Dr Craddock looked at me, pulled out a chair and said sit down and tell us what you think. So he didn't just give me my start in research, he literally gave me a seat at the table to empower me in my journey as a scientist. And ASHS provided the forum for that to happen.

Curt Rom:

Dr Alexander, that's a great story, you know. It just shows the power of that relationship between a faculty member and a student and the importance of finding that mentor and being encouraged like that. So what were your next steps in going to graduate school and finding your path towards your current position?

Lisa Alexander:

Absolutely Well. I went to graduate school with a very focused goal in mind, which was to be the head of the American Chestnut Foundation Breeding Project. Right, no small goals here. And even though you know, throughout my studies over my four years at Purdue University, in their forestry department, I had a great time, I was at the Hardwood Tree Improvement and Regeneration Center. So I got to learn a lot about growing trees, a lot about sort of the market and the industry and all these other facets.

Lisa Alexander:

I did a breeding project and a molecular genetics project, but I learned so many more facets outside of breeding that sort of changed the direction that I was looking at. I was so interested in the genetics. It was really the time of the sequence explosion. All of the new sequencing technologies had come out, the pyrosequencing and all the you know quicker genotyping, and so that felt like such a revolution to be a part of that I kind of switched direction and went to a more classic molecular genetics route which ended up a postdoc at University of Tennessee, breeding switchgrass there.

Lisa Alexander:

So I went from trees to grass and then, like every good postdoc, I spent a lot of time searching for a job and when this job, I saw this job at the National Arboretum and it just fit everything. It was woody species and trees breeding molecular genetics. At the time I thought, well, did I make a mistake studying trees when I'm over here breeding grass? But it turned out everything I had learned in all the different positions really fit together well for this National Arboretum breeding and genetics position. So they were initially afraid that species like hydrangeas or dogwood was going to take too much time. And I told him that I came from forest trees. So to me I'm you know, I'm working very quickly through these breeding cycles and I really enjoy it.

Curt Rom:

Well, that also shows a really strong importance of kind of being broadly trained and working with a number of crops and you know you were just at the right place at the right time. Now you know, when you were in graduate school and in your postdoc, I mean it really was the molecular revolution in how we can apply those tools and use those tools. So it had to be exciting and I can see, you know, going from trees to grass and now you're back with woody species. I think that probably added kind of a rainbow of textures, of things that you could learn and bring to your current position for the USDA. So how did you focus in on hydrangeas? I just love hydrangeas. My oak leaf hydrangeas are just probably seven to 10 days away from blooming in my yard. So how did you get to hydrangeas?

Lisa Alexander:

Well, I got to hydrangeas because I got a lot of advice from. I sought out advice from other scientists, from industry folks, and they a lot of people gave me a good piece of advice, which is you need to work on a crop, at least one crop, that has some high impact in the industry. You know, you can't necessarily make your whole career with you know sort of rare Mahonia hybrids not that those aren't great, and I'm only saying that because I'm making them. I'm not, I'm not deriding anybody but myself here. And so roses, hydrangeas, dogwoods, those are some really top impactful plants. And then I just kind of took a survey of what work was going on and where gaps were.

Lisa Alexander:

And big leaf hydrangea, that's a hydrangea that we think about a lot with the pink and the blue mophead and fluorescences. There is a lot of work being done in that sphere. But there are so many other species of hydrangeas that in my opinion, didn't have a lot of the genomic resources or cultivar development enabling technologies that other you know species had, and so I thought there was a real opportunity to leverage, you know, the market sort of value and impact of big leaf hydrangea but then sort of also bring in these other species as well, and breeding companies are very excited for Hydrangea paniculata, hydrangea arborescens, hydrangea quercifolia, which is Oakleaf Hydrangea. So that's one of the reasons I was there and then, when I started working with it, I loved the plant. So that also helps when you have a passion for the plant, especially Oakleaf Hydrangea. I just think it's a great ornamental landscape plant that's underutilized and it really pushes me and gives me a lot of joy to work with that plant and to improve it.

Curt Rom:

Before we get deeper into the science. But since you're working on hydrangea and you said it was important to work on something important, isn't hydrangea like one of the most important potted nursery plants in the industry, so it has incredible economic value? Is that right?

Lisa Alexander:

It does. 2019 Census of Horticulture rated it at $155 million impact for just big leaf hydrangea, which makes it the second best-selling woody shrub behind rose. So roses, hydrangeas, those are absolutely the top two. And hydrangeas here we see them a lot as a landscape plant, but worldwide they are very popular for container plants, for florist production at cut flowers. So really, hydrangea has a role in all of the aspects of the green industry, from landscape to floriculture to container

Curt Rom:

so you work for the National Arboretum.

Lisa Alexander:

Yes.

Curt Rom:

But you're not located at the National Arboretum I am not. Tell us again where you're located. I just think it's spectacular that the USDA has, you know, stations that are dispersed and can work in locations that are valuable for the work to be done.

Lisa Alexander:

So tell us where you're at in locations that are valuable for the work to be done. So tell us where you're at. Absolutely, I'm located in McMinnville, tennessee, which is one of the centers of nursery production in the United States. I am co -located at a Tennessee State University facility. It's called the Otis L Floyd Nursery Research Center and it's really unique in that every scientist here studies some aspect of woody crops or nursery production from entomology, chemical, ecology, sustainable production, you know, weed control substrates it's all here in one spot just for the nursery industry,

Lisa Alexander:

that were really big champions of having a research facility here. I mean they saw other types of crops, you know, getting lobby, getting support, that kind of thing and they, you know, said we would like USDA support for our crop, for our production system, and so this facility was established with USDA and Tennessee State University and there have been USDA scientists here from the very start. And our research unit, which is the Floral and Nursery Plants Research Unit, is located in Beltsville, Maryland, and we have many other scientists that work on, many other scientists that work on breeding and diseases and turf grass and all sorts of interesting specialty crop issues. But myself and the other scientists here are really focused on breeding and production to support the woody ornamental industry and being able to walk out of my door and walk into five or six or 10 or 20 different nurseries has really been really an amazing experience and helps us be successful and make sure that our deliverables are really what the stakeholders are looking for.

Curt Rom:

And I also think it's wonderful that you're co-located with a public university. One of the things that I've really enjoyed in my career is the ability to work with USDA scientists that have a different perspective. They have more of a national perspective and an industry-wide perspective and do more fundamental things that maybe I can do. But I can leverage those partnerships to address local questions. That partnership between the USDA and state agencies and public universities I just think it's spectacular. So Tennessee State's lucky to have you right there.

Lisa Alexander:

Well, we're lucky to have that partnership as well, and Tennessee Department of Ag is here in our facility, and so we really are trying to serve the industry in a real and tangible way.

Curt Rom:

Okay, so, Lisa, you're a member of the American Society of Horticulture Science, as we say the ASHS. Why did you join and what benefits do you see out of it?

Lisa Alexander:

Well, I joined initially because, as I mentioned, my professor as an undergraduate took us there and it really made me feel like I had a seat at the table and my voice and my ideas were important and that was a really big deal as an undergraduate and I've always thought that the atmosphere of the conferences they're big but not too big. There's a lot going on but not too much. I just always felt like it was a really good place for me to grow and thrive as a scientist a really good place for me to grow and thrive as a scientist. Also, the professional interest groups ornamental plant breeding, nursery crops, federal partners they have been ways for me to get to know colleagues. You know we put together proposals and meeting tours and you know you get to know people that you wouldn't necessarily maybe write grants or collaborate with. You get to know people that you wouldn't necessarily maybe write grants or collaborate with.

Lisa Alexander:

It has broadened my network of people that I have, like we were working on a big grant specialty crops grant and some of the people that I thought we need people to understand water and water use. On this, well, I knew who to talk to because ASHS and they have a whole interest group there and also I like it because I go to the conferences and I come back with some new idea. I think I took a picture of a poster last year that I thought I'm going to change the way I do it, like this is better, this is better than what I'm doing, and take that home and implement it. So I just think there's a whole world of reasons to join and the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.

Curt Rom:

Yeah, I agree, it's good science and good people. You know, the networks that we build are really wonderful for that.

Samson Humphrey:

Fantastic. Yeah, your passion really comes out here in this conversation, and I want to plug this because I enjoyed it so much. You recently won the Ornamental Publication Award for your publication titled Precipitation, Temperature and Population Structure Influence Genetic Diversity of Oak Leaf Hydrangea Throughout Its Native Range. So congratulations on that. I don't think anyone was more deserving, but I'm curious. What does it look like to actually be there and to be in your position? What are you looking at every day? What are you seeing?

Lisa Alexander:

I look out my window and I see my fields and one of the reasons I really enjoy where I work at this, the Otis L Floyd Nursery Research Center is that we are here among our plants. So one of the biggest things I see right now is our range wide collection of oakleaf hydrangea. So we, as I mentioned, it's a great plant. I love the plant. It is native to a six-state region in the southeast, so right where we're located here, but it really has ornamental merit nationwide. So I'm looking at some. Right now we have a range-wide test where we collected from the Florida panhandle all the way to the north end of the range, so I can see the variability out my window in both leaf out and flowering. What initiated that collection is that we've bred oakleaf hydrangea, we've developed research populations for it and we've made some nice plant releases. But we noticed that the offspring, when we are breeding oakleaf hydrangea, they don't have a huge range of genetic variability. That is, we didn't see the large ranges and traits like size or form or flower structure or color that really define other species of hydrangea and sort of lead to these novel forms that make them so interesting. And really we hypothesized that that lack of genetic variability was due to a low level of variability in the parents, meaning that all the oakleaf hydrangeas on the market were just genetically very similar. And as plant breeders, we're always looking for ways to increase the genetic variation on which our selection can act, and that is through wild collections. Mutation breeding crosses all the things that generate variation and at the same time we noticed that the number of oakleaf hydrangea accessions in the national germplasm system was quite low, like in the teens, and this is a native plant.

Lisa Alexander:

So we worked with colleagues at the University of Minnesota, stan Hokanson and Andy Sherwood, to collect oakleaf hydrangea throughout the native range, really trying to capture as much genetic variability as possible. So the paper that won the award the first author on that paper was Andy Sherwood, who was a grad student at University of Minnesota, so I want to give them their proper credit for all their hard work in this project. So as part of Andy's work, he looked at thousands of genetic markers in these populations and found some very cool stuff. Well, first I should say we found that oakleaf hydrangea has disappeared from a substantial number of previously recorded locations. So it was a real eye-opener, both for us as scientists and also as conservationists, to really take a look at how that range has changed with urbanization and land use changes over the years.

Lisa Alexander:

Among the remaining populations, we found six genetically distinct groups.

Lisa Alexander:

Among the remaining populations, we found six genetically distinct groups and a couple of the groups in the Florida panhandle and one in Mississippi had really unique alleles, meaning that they contain rare copies of genes, and we also found some populations with genes that might help them survive drought or grow better in cold climates.

Lisa Alexander:

So one of the awesome things about new plant breeding technologies is that we can now combine that traditional data we take on form and flower shape, color, all those visual metrics with huge amounts of genetic data. We can combine that with imaging data and really get to the answer to the question what genes are causing these ornamental traits of interest and what genes are conferring ecosystem services like drought resistance or cold tolerance. So it's an exciting time. I look out on this plant population and I see a lot of work from past scientists, but I also see a lot of future um technologies there that are really going to answer some interesting genetic questions, not only about Oakleaf hydrangeas but about but about all plants. Um and plant breeding is a numbers game, as we all know, and it's really about the number you you kill and not the number you keep.

Curt Rom:

I want to go back to your story about your collaborations with the University of Minnesota. What is the native range of the species of hydrangea? And in that work and in this paper, what are some of the unique characteristics or unique ecotypes that you found, that you think you might be able to bring into understanding the background, the genetic background for those, and might introduce some of those characteristics to commercial plants?

Lisa Alexander:

Sure, well, the native range extends from northern Florida, louisiana, up through the southern part of Tennessee, florida, louisiana, up through the southern part of Tennessee. It's a six-state region. It's not huge, but there is a demand for the plants all over. And so in Minnesota they're very interested, as you know, in cold hardiness, and so they really wanted to look at these populations and say are there differences? In midwinter, you know, coldest temperature they can accept and all these traits that have to do with cold tolerance. And there were big differences among them for how they survived in Minnesota and there are big differences among them for how they grow here. Some of the differences are their size and form. Many of them, from the Southern populations, have a low to the ground, I would almost say trailing, form. There are some with very fast digit or upright forms.

Lisa Alexander:

And with the genetic work we looked at thousands and thousands of single nucleotide polymorphisms and found that some of these traits seem to be related to the genes.

Lisa Alexander:

So, for example, some of the ones in compact, small plants, you know, tend to have clusters of genes in places that the other plants don't. And then we have some plants where they're from very dry areas, climatically, a dry range, and they seem to have some alleles that might cause adaptation to that drier weather and we're currently testing those to see, you know, do they actually confer some kind of drought resistance in a production setting, in a landscape setting? So those are the kind of traits that we would like to bring in, both novel forms and ecosystem services, and then ultimately be able to say here are the genes that really influence these traits, and then be able to have plants with those traits but also have those technologies to give to other scientists or breeding companies and say here here's a suite of you know 20, 25 genes, you know genotype for these, and you'll have improved drought resistance, less leaf spot, whatever the trait is that we're looking at.

Curt Rom:

Wonderful Thanks for explaining all that. Yeah, there are. You know, the diversity out there in the wild and in nature is really amazing. And so you've got all those phenotypes and you've obviously done all of this molecular work so you understand the genotypes. And that kind of brings me to another subject I want to ask you about. So genomics. You built up a huge database just on this one plant and you know genomic information is becoming very important kind of across the board to so many crops in so many plants and it really helps launch us in research. So the Journal of the American Society of Horticulture Science is starting a new effort in publishing genomic libraries and genomic data. You're kind of involved in that. You were one of the people that helped stimulate that idea. Tell us what's going to go on with that.

Lisa Alexander:

Sure, absolutely. Like you said, genomics has come such a long way in recent years, come such a long way in recent years and a lot of the technology that was previously only available for big ag is now within the reach of specialty crops. And the expectation for publishing crop genomes often includes other really large components like mapping transcriptomics, like mapping transcriptomics, multiple year evaluations, and those are great and excellent pieces of work. But specialty crops sometimes don't have the large funding bases behind them for very large, complex, you know, multi-institution projects. But there are still scientists and still breeders that are working with those crops and with those genomes for important purposes.

Lisa Alexander:

Hort Genomes is really our way of letting folks know that there is now a home for publishing annotated genomes of specialty crop species.

Lisa Alexander:

Of course we know they were always welcome in our journal, but I think Hort Genomes is just going to be a way to publicly say this is the home for annotated specialty crop genomes. We envision this as a hub for applied specialty crop genomics where the genomes are the center and it reaches out into marker development, into pan genomes. You know, in the large scale transcript stomach studies and maybe you're a pathologist and you want to use raw RNA seed reads, to look for viruses, or maybe you study flowering and you want to compare flowering time genes across horticultural crops. The possibilities for how to use annotated genomes are endless, and so having a place to have them, to put them out there for other scientists, breeders, folks to know hey, these genomes exist, here's this great data and here's where it lives I think is really going to be a great resource for our community, and JASHS even updated the scope and aims to reflect this emphasis on omics and other technologies, just to really underscore that this is the home for horticultural crop genomes.

Curt Rom:

So who do you envision would be submitting these kind of databases and information? Horticulturists, but you also kind of mentioned plant pathologists. What do you envision?

Lisa Alexander:

Absolutely. I envision any scientist that is working on genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics as part of a project to be able to publish in this, and that might include, you know, folks working at breeding companies. Often have, you know, I see those a lot. We get posters, we get presentations at our society meetings, but often not going to do another big component to their work. If they have gotten, for example, you know, enough reads together to develop markers, it might stop very soon after that, and so I think this would be a good place for those folks to be able to posit hey, we, you know, we've got a genome for this crop and here it is. It could be scientists that are publishing completed works, or they could just be publishing data for use for other scientists and directly apply technology for breeding companies.

Lisa Alexander:

So you might have a genome and you annotated it and you say these you know are in a database and they're ready, and somebody like me, I'm always looking for, you know, powdery mildew resistance genes, MLO genes. If there's a new genome out, boy, I'm mining those things, and so I just see it as a good applied resource. And you don't know who's going to use it. Could be a pathologist, could be a breeder could be somebody, a taxonomist. That's reorganizing. You know, the evolution of the Ericales might want to use this work, but if it's not out there, nobody knows it exists, then it's not useful to anybody.

Curt Rom:

Yeah, I see it as being really novel and what a service to science and to those people that are interested in breeding, because now, instead of having to look at a whole range of different sources where you might find the genomic information, we've now got it consolidated and really aggregated in one location for specialty crops. That's really remarkable and that'll be so helpful to help science move forward and actually to help our industries move forward.

Lisa Alexander:

Absolutely. I look forward to it. And you know, the more we show how applied genomes are useful, you know, the more sort of impetus and momentum we get behind developing more of them, and then this really does become a hub and a community for especially crop genomics.

Samson Humphrey:

So, dr Alexander, why is it important for researchers to publish genomes?

Lisa Alexander:

on a more philosophical level, Genomes are important because essentially they're the upstream blueprint for everything else that happens in the plant. So whether you're studying molecular biology or physiology or cell division or really any basic or applied aspect of plant science, I mean the genome is sort of the most upstream we'll call it enabling technology that a species can have. You know, I know that some people might think well, you know, I don't have a lab. I do applied work, even knowing how are these species related. You know how are you going to groups? You know this is our core collection. You know these are susceptible cultivars or these are tolerant cultivars for, you know, a disease.

Lisa Alexander:

So the genetics of the plants, as represented by the actual genomic data, is useful for almost any downstream application. Useful for almost any downstream application. And now that I've genomes and the use of genomes is not simply with computational biologists anymore, you can use them through graphical user interfaces and many different kinds of software. I think that it is a good idea that other scientists always keep in mind you know that there's this genome available and that there's ways that the knowledge from the genomes will impact their work. And just like we are always keeping in mind, you know, when I'm selecting a plant. I'm keeping in mind the other aspects of horticulture, you know, will this plant propagate? Can a grower grow it? It can't just be, you know the great plant. So, as other scientists in their distinct fields are focusing on mainly on their own problem, always the genetics of the plants and the species they're dealing with are a thought in their mind, and how that research is structured so they really enable you know research for everybody.

Curt Rom:

Yeah, you know, I think genomics is real science. I know sometimes some of us that are laboratory and field scientists we think that science is always experimentally based. You know, I'm going to create a hypothesis, go test the hypothesis, do an experiment and I publish the results of the experiment. Or I made a new innovation or a new technology or I discovered something new. But genomics is a real important discipline of our science and so I'm glad that we're making a home for it in the American Society of Horticulture Science to recognize that body of work, because probably going forward, it's going to become more and more fundamentally important to understand how the rest of us are doing. The science can interpret that science if we understand the genome. So I'm glad we finally have a place for it.

Samson Humphrey:

Me too, absolutely, and thank you for elaborating on that, dr Alexander, because we have many students that listen to this podcast, young people who may be in very different fields related to horticulture, that they may have never looked at genome data before and maybe never have been interested in it or realized that it could be valuable for them, and so thank you so much for coming on and helping expand people's horizons Well it was my pleasure and thank you for putting together this podcast and getting plants, people and science out into the world.

Samson Humphrey:

Wow, that was so much fun. I love talking to scientists and learning from scientists who do types of science that I have never done myself. This genetics related and and ornamentals as well is so it still feels so foreign to me. It still feels so new to me. It still feels so new to me, even though I'm a plant scientist. It was just so exciting to hear her thoughts and opinions and about her current work. What do you think, Kurt?

Curt Rom:

Well, you know, besides being a professional horticulturist, I'm an avid gardener, so gardening is my major hobby. And as we were interviewing her and as we were preparing for this, I was sitting on my own patio looking at my gardens and I have a number of hydrangea. I have several oak leaf hydrangea but several other species of hydrangea and it made me pause and think. Now I think of those as a garden plant and they look great in my garden. But behind every one of those plants there's a lot of science. So in this particular case, this group of scientists look at the ecological range and the diversity of these plants to understand them and those plants in my garden.

Curt Rom:

Somebody had to understand those. Somebody had to make a selection on those varieties or improve those varieties through breeding technique. Then they had to figure out how to propagate it and how to grow it and how to ship it and market it. You know, the part I do, the gardening part, might be kind of the simplest and it's the last step in the display of that plant. But I really enjoyed hearing about the work that Dr Alexander does and I have to tell you I'm very excited about this new effort of the SHS on Hort Genomes, the Hort Genomes Project. I think this is going to be a great place for scientists to put this information and to have it published and have it accessible through our open source journals so that other scientists can pull that information and review it. So it was really exciting to me on kind of the gardening level and it was exciting to me on the scientific level.

Samson Humphrey:

Absolutely, and how she talked about, there hasn't been a place for Hort Genomes to be published like this, and that this is just a wonderful step forward for just another way that the American Society for Horticultural Science supports scientists and supports the dissemination of all of this amazing work that all sorts of people are doing. So so exciting, wonderful time to be a part of the organization For our listeners. If you want to read more about this topic, please check out Dr Alexander's paper titled Precipitation, temperature and Population Structure Influence Genetic Diversity of Oakleaf Hydrangea Throughout Its Native Range, which is published in the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science, also called JASHS. You can also find information to publish your hort genomes on ASHSorg. On the about page for the Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science, links to Dr Alexander's work and to more information about hort genomes will be in the show notes.

Curt Rom:

If this interview resonates with you, I recommend you renew your membership. Or maybe you want to consider joining the American Society for Horticultural Science, and then you can join our interest groups such as the Ornamental Plant Breeding Group, the Ornamental Turf and Landscape Plant Group, nursery Crops Group, plant Genetics and Germplasm Group or the Plant Biotechnology Interest Group. And also I encourage you to take a look at the various sections of our open source journals where you can find information on now horticulture crop, specialty crop genomes, horticulture research, physiology, technology, breeding, genetics, as well as teaching. If you'd like more information on the American Society for Horticulture Science, I encourage you to go to our website, ashsorg. Thank you so much for joining us. The ASHS podcast Plants, people and Science is made possible by member dues and volunteerism. Please go to ashsorg 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:

This episode was hosted by Samson Humphrey and Kurt Rohn. Special thanks to our audio engineer, andrew Sheldorf, our research specialists Lena Wilson and Andrew Sheldorf, our ASHS support team, sarah Powell and Sally Murphy, and our musician, john Clark. Thanks for listening.