We hope you enjoy the series of articles by Carolina.
The first article is up this week, and you will see other articles coming up over the next two weeks.
If you have any questions for Carolina, be sure to ask her in the comment box below.
Have A Question For Carolina?
Feb 7, 2016 By Deepa Gopal
Comments
Hi my name is fae. I have a question for you. After forest fires, is there anything we could do to help bring the plants back? Like maybe do something to the soil be hydro-phobic for the least amount of time?
Hi Fae, thank you for reading our articles and post interesting questions. But this article was done in 2016 and sorry to tell you that we don't have direct contact with the expert anymore.
I have seen fruit trees with black mold on them. It also looks like they are rotting. Do you know what that is?
HOW DO YOU KNOW THERE IS A DISEASE OR NOT WITHOUT SPOTS ON THE PLANT?
thank you for your question! some diseases have visible symptoms, in the fruits or leaves and you can easily recognized them. But some diseases are hard to tell just by looking at plants, for example, some seeds have viruses inside. There are molecular biology techniques to analize plant tissue samples and search for pathogens.
What do you like doing most in your lab?
Thank you for your question, I enjoy the most working with plant tissue culture. I found fascinating to grow plants in glass tubes or flasks and follow their growth for our experiments, usually Arabidopsis thaliana plants. We keep them for a while in the growth chamber, and then in the greenhouse.
What is your favorite plant?
Thank you for your question! I like ornamental plants such as orchids, especially those resembling animals or birds like White Egret Orchid (the scientific name is Pecteilis radiata) or Monkey Face Orchid (Dracula simia). I also like the sensitive plant Mimosa pudica, if you touch the leaves, they would quickly fold inward to defend itself!
