Monthly Meetings

General Meeting at St. Mark’s Presbyterian, Knox Room and via Zoom.

“Roots”

Speaker: William LaVoy started his career with plants at the Muir Woods National Monument working for the National Park Service, while studying botany at San Francisco State University. He then shifted focus to agriculture where he worked with symbiotic mycorrhiza and their role in drought tolerance in rice, while obtaining a Master’s at Mahidol University in Thailand. Now as a PhD candidate in the Computational Plant Science Lab with Dr. Alex Bucksch at the University of Arizona, William is pursuing the use of sophisticated technological tools to help better understand the impact of roots and their architecture on nutrient uptake to aid plant breeding efforts.

This presentation will focus on the often overlooked and hidden half of plants, the roots. Roots are responsible for the uptake and transportation of almost all nutrients required for happy and healthy plants. They also serve as the interface between the plant and the surrounding soil environment. Root signals will actively recruit beneficial soil micro-organisms and alert the rest of the plant about changing environmental conditions. Roots are amazingly complex and important, please join my presentation to learn all about them!