Achievement

Ozone is increasing in concentration, and plants exposed to ozone can exhibit reduced yield. However, the effects of ozone on tropical plants have not been studied extensively. IGERT Fellow Lorena Rios spent the last semester in Panama evaluating the growth of Theobroma cacao seedlings under ozone and ozone-free conditions, and identifying the genes involved in the oxidative stress response. Cacao is one of the few tropical trees to have a fully-sequenced genome allowing our students to take advantage of whole genome approaches to stress response in a non-traditional crop system.