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Dr. Adrian Israel Zuniga Pinto
Dr. Adrian Israel Zuniga Pinto
For the month of June, GCPSA is thrilled to feature Dr. Adrian Zuniga who recently graduated from his PhD graduate program under the guidance of Dr. Natalia Peres at UF IFAS Gulf Coast Research and Education Center's Plant Pathology Lab.
How did you first become interested in agriculture?
My family got me interested, my dad with his work and my grandfather with his hobby. When my dad started at the university, he studied agronomy, but halfway through, he switched to animal sciences. I grew up seeing my dad raise hogs, chickens, and other livestock. In Quevedo, Ecuador, near the coast, where I grew up, we are mostly known for producing cacao and banana exports. At some point in my dad’s career, he switched back to plants because that is his passion. He served as the regional manager for the banana production in our area. I always used to go with him to work, and I enjoyed seeing the plantation—how things are harvested, and the mechanism to grade the banana. My grandfather’s hobby is gardening. He has limes, mangoes, almost every tropical fruit that you can think of. Growing up, if we wanted to make orange juice, we would go out to my grandpa's backyard and grab some oranges, and they would go straight from the tree to the table. It was so amazing to me that I wanted to work in agriculture at an early age. So, once I graduated from high school, I applied to go to an agriculturally oriented university in Honduras. They have four specializations: agronomy, food processing, environmental sciences, and business. Although I initially enrolled in their business program, I eventually decided to pursue my calling which is pure agriculture. After I graduated, I wanted to do more. I wanted to be the person helping growers fix problems. I did my internship with Dr. Natalia Peres at UF IFAS GCREC in 2012 and started my MS and PhD programs after that.
Can you give us a brief overview of your dissertation research?
My dissertation was focused on two pathogens that affect strawberries. The first was Botrytis cinerea, and the second was Neopestalotiopsis.
The major issue with Botrytis is that it has high genetic diversity and prolific sporulation. The pathogen can overcome pesticides quickly by mutation, multiple times within a single season. In my dissertation, my first objective was to develop what is called a high-resolution melting, or HRM, assay to identify specific mutations that confer resistance to different fungicides so growers are better informed which fungicides to spray based on the type of Botrytis they have. The protocol that I developed uses spores, avoiding the DNA-extraction step and just running the HRM.
The second objective was to study the resistance frequency of a fungicide called fludioxonil. This fungicide is pretty much considered a silver bullet for growers because it was very effective. However, within the last five years, we have seen that it is not as effective as before.
The next part of my research was working with the new pathogenic species Neopestalotiopsis, which has been a very important research subject for the past few years. Being a new pathogenic species in Florida strawberry production, we did not know much about it when we started our research. I actually spent all the time during the pandemic developing a semi-selective medium so we could isolate the pathogen from the soil and the strawberry crop debris. It was a tedious process to narrow down the ingredients so we could be confident the recipe could only grow Neopestalotiopsis, inhibiting the growth of all the other pathogens harbored in the plants, the plant residue, and the soil.
Then I used the media to determine the colony forming units and the survival of the pathogen in the soil and crop debris over time. We found that the pathogen does survive in the soil from one season to the next. It also survives in the strawberry leaves until leaf decomposition, where it goes into the ground and is considered soilborne. The pathogen can survive in the crown for 16 months, and possibly longer!
I also tried a heat treatment, or thermotherapy, technique to kill the Neopestalotiopsis on the transplants prior to planting. A heat treatment protocol has already been established for Botrytis and other pathogens, but it has not been tested yet on Neopestalotiopsis. In vitro, we found that after four hours at 44 degrees Celsius, it completely killed the spores. For comparison, it only takes 30 minutes of thermotherapy to kill other pathogens. In plants, this heat treatment can reduce the level of inoculant by up to 50%.
Finally, because strawberry plants are annual, at the end of the season growers get rid of the crop, usually with an herbicide, so we studied the effect of terminating strawberries at the end of the season on the inoculum of Neopestalotiopsis. Unfortunately, terminating strawberries this way can spike Neopestalotiopsis levels in the plant. Since Neopestalotiopsis spp. are necrotrophs and feed on the damaged strawberry tissue, damaging the strawberry plants with herbicides just makes food more available for the pathogen.
What is the greatest challenge you have encountered in your career and how did you overcome it?
I would say, the pandemic. It did set my research back a little. Mentally and physically, it was a lot of stress, not being able to be with my family, and seeing all that stuff on the news. And then it was mostly writing, but it wasn't productive writing because I wasn't in the right headspace if that makes sense. But I got to a point of saying, okay, I need to compartmentalize and focus on what I can do and what I have control of. I said, okay, let's just do something productive that will add to my PhD that will save me some time whenever things go back to normal.
Writing a dissertation was also challenging. Luckily, I had some experience during my master's writing. So when I was writing my dissertation, the biggest challenge was just finding where to start writing. The way that I overcame the challenge of writing was just setting myself a goal for the day. Today you're going to write a page. And that's literally how I got through it, one small goal at a time. I had seven chapters, so if I looked at the whole situation, I would get overwhelmed. But when I saw it step by step or section by section, let’s just get it done, focusing on the small pictures to put the pieces together to build a bigger picture.
What do you do for fun to relax?
I have been in Florida for 10 years now, and I have learned to love Tampa. I didn't at the beginning, but now I love the city and the people. I have made some of the most amazing friends that I consider family. When I was going through a low, they were always there for me. They said, just forget about the rest of life for an hour or two and then just focus on a nice meal, just have a cocktail, chit chat. And so that's my deepest stress buster, just hanging out with my friends. We would go to the beach, to the theme parks, have brunch on Sundays….
That's the social side of things. But then I also love some me time—like reading. I don't read a lot, but I like to read things that are related to what is going on in my country. We can call it happy news stories.
What are your immediate plans after graduating from your PhD program?
I'm going to do a postdoc with Natalia, because we have some projects that I was working on that I did not put into my dissertation. So I want to work on those and also publish the papers that I didn’t publish for my dissertation. I don't plan on staying too long as a postdoc because my primary objective is to get a job in the industry. I want to be able to lead pathology projects. That's the goal, finding a job that will allow me to do research. As long as I'm doing research related to plant pathology, I’ll be happy.
Testimonial from Dr. Natalia Peres
Adrian started in our program as an undergraduate intern over 10 years ago when he was in his last semester at Zamorano School in Honduras. He ended up coming back a few months after graduation as a Research Scholar. He did not intend to pursue grad school at the time but changed his mind after a couple of years. He ended up getting his M.S. and PhD in our lab so he has been with us for a while and it has been such a pleasure to watch him grow both professionally and personally. One of Adrian’s strengths is his very easygoing personality. He gets along well with everyone and has made a lot of friends over the years. We are happy to keep him with us as he will now be working as a postdoc in our lab
Interviewer: Lillian Pride
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