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Paul Reed Hepperly, New Farm research and training manager at The Rodale Institute, will give an open public seminar on “Banking Atmospheric Carbon in Soil: The Value of Organic Agriculture” 7 p.m. Thursday, July 28, in the Kirby Hall of Civil Rights auditorium (room 104).
The talk will take place during a meeting of the Consortium for Research Opportunities in the Plant Sciences (CROPS), which Lafayette will host July 28-29. Lafayette is the lead institution in CROPS, which brings together chemists, biochemists, and molecular biologists from Lafayette, Colgate University, Haverford College, Juniata College, Marist College, Moravian College, and Lehigh University.
Among other goals, the program seeks to encourage students to pursue research in the plant sciences and to heighten the awareness among students, faculty, and the larger community of the importance of plant sciences. CROPS is funded by grants from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation and the National Science Foundation. Program directors are David Husic, Larkin Professor and head of chemistry, and his wife, Diane Husic, professor and chair of biology at Moravian College.
Since 2002, Hepperly has directed the research programs of The Rodale Institute, a nonprofit organization that seeks to transform the world’s food system through the adoption of regenerative organic agricultural practice. He grew up on a livestock farm in northwestern Illinois and pursued higher education in the fields of crop science and plant pathology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was a tenured professor of crop protection at the University of Puerto Rico, where he directed crop protection research and outreach for International Soybean Program. He also was tenured as a research plant pathologist for Tropical Agriculture Research Station of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Research Service in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Before coming to Pennsylvania, Hepperly directed the tropical and full season development for researching and developing new corn, soybean, sorghum, and sunflower varieties in Puerto Rico, Mexico, Hawaii, and Chile for Asgrow, Dekalb Genetics, and Pioneer Hi-bred International. He has authored over 150 scientific publications on a range of topics in agronomy, weed science, crop breeding, and plant pathology. His most recent publication, which appears this month in Bioscience, is a review of the agronomic, economic, energetic, and environmental advantages of organic agriculture based on 22 years of the Rodale Institute Farming Systems Trial. The article directly compares organic to conventional row crop agriculture from well designed, replicated, and randomized field designs.
Previous CROPS talks at Lafayette focused on how structural biochemists use a technique known as x-ray crystallography to determine the detailed three-dimensional structure of a complex protein molecule, which provides insight into the structural and functional relationships in proteins, and how this methodology, as well as other biochemical and molecular techniques, have been applied to study the details of the reaction mechanism and regulation of the enzyme carbonic anhydrase from the widely studied mustard plant, Arabidopsis thaliana.
CROPS participants share an appreciation for the importance of chemical and molecular approaches in the investigation of fundamental research questions in the plant sciences. Some major goals are to:
The program’s Undergraduate Research Center (URC) focuses on the active research collaborations of undergraduates early in their academic careers with faculty members who have made significant contributions to the plant science research literature through diverse chemical and molecular experimental approaches. The research projects of consortium participants have clear links to many important contemporary research areas, including photochemistry and photosynthesis, nanotechnology, regulation of gene expression, protein structure and function analysis, and the study of enzymes used for processing plant biomaterials.
“An important goal of these experiences is to introduce student participants to the excitement and nature of scientific inquiry,” says David Husic. “This will, in turn, lead to the development of their ability and confidence to methodically design, carry out, and analyze experimentation to address significant interdisciplinary questions.
“Students and faculty benefit from research discussions, guest speakers, peer presentations, a summer research symposium, and other activities supported by the CROPS–URC. Oral and written dissemination of their accomplishments to the local and wider scientific communities is emphasized because of the importance of these activities in the development of scientists as effective communicators.”
Photosynthetic plants are important sources of industrial and consumer products and serve as model systems for fundamental chemical and biochemical research. There are clear links between plant sciences and a number of contemporary issues in science and society – many of which represent some of the world’s most critical challenges. Sustainable development and agriculture, genetically modified foods, global warming, and alternative energy sources are a few examples.
Despite the wide range of applications of plant research and the workforce need for scientists trained in contemporary methods of plant molecular sciences, such topics are underrepresented in the undergraduate science curricula, especially at primarily undergraduate institutions or universities that lack agriculture, horticulture or forestry programs.