This summer, the weather conditions were especially hard: rainy, hot and humid. Our work was impacted by these environmental conditions and our production was reduced. However, we still managed to do a lot of work and experiments that will be the foundation for our 2025-2026 research projects. 

I want to thank each and everyone of the TomatoLab members that helped and cared for our field. I also want to give a shoutout and thanks to the farm crew at Upper Marlboro. They were super helpful and without their support we couldn't have done our work!

We are almost at the end of the season and I'm super excited to see that despite a challenging start, we have been successfully carried out our first field season at the tomato lab! Many of our heirloom lines did really well and I'm excited that these will serve our research purposes in the years to come. I'm thankful for all the people who contributed to this field season, especially to our lab manager Elsa and our undergrads Kylie, Max, Eric and Gavin for all their help. 

This past week we transplanted our tomatoes in the field. This is the first field season as PI and it felt like a dream come true. We have transplanted an interesting collection of materials, from CRISPR mutants to wild species, pre-breeding lines to heirlooms! These materials will set the foundation for the lab research in the coming year(s). 

I want to shout out to the undergrads Eric, Max (Junchi), Jordan and Gavin; to Elsa (lab tech) and three grad students from the Qi lab (Joey, Innocent & Josh). They were super helpful and worked hard to get the plants in the field. I also want to thank Donald Murphy and the Upper Marlboro research station crew for their help setting up the field and taking care of the plants.

Stay put for future news on these tomatoes! 

I am glad to share that I'm setting up shop at the Department of Plant Science & Landscape Architecture in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. After 5 years working in industry, I'm happy to come back to Academia and do what I like the most: SCIENCE! I'm looking forward to mentoring students and postdocs and do groundbreaking research unraveling the secrets of plant development and applying that knowledge in applications for trait development and breeding in Vegetables and Ornamentals. 

Stay put for more news, as I hope to be able to open my lab for positions soon!