Orchids, Perennial Fruits: Vanilla and Phalaenopsis

Keywords: Fruit and Flavor Development

I am currently a master’s student with Dr. Sharman O’Neill in the Department of Plant Biology.  I attended the University of Montana Western, Montana State University Billings, and finished my BS in biology and a minor in physics at Rocky Mountain College in Billings, MT.  Before coming to U.C. Davis, I worked as an intern with Boyce Thompson Institute at Cornell University and with the U.S. Forest Service as a field botanist. I currently am a review editor with Elsevier and work as a teaching assistant for PLB105 and PLB113 while pursuing my degree. I am interested in how genes influence a plant’s phenotype.  I work with orchids as a system to explore plant and fruit development, anatomy, transcriptomics, breeding, tissue culture and production practices, and secondary metabolism involved in flavor and aroma.  My main work is with fruit development in Vanilla planifolia, but I also work with a variety of other vanillas and orchid species in the U.C. Davis collections.