The Translational Plant Sciences Graduate Program is pleased to announce that third-year fellow Katie D’Amico was recently awarded funding from The Ohio State University’s Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship. Her project, titled Transcriptome analysis of almond cultivars exhibiting various levels of non-infectious bud failure, investigates an age-related disorder affecting almond trees.

Project summary:
All organisms age, and our understanding of this process is rooted primarily in the study of mammals. The impacts of aging in plants, however, can affect agricultural production and yield, making this an important but neglected area of research. The focus of this project is on bud failure, a disorder in almond trees not linked to a pest or pathogen, which affects the development of vegetative buds leading to yield loss in almond orchards. It is hypothesized that bud failure is an age-related disorder, however the underlying genetic mechanisms contributing to bud failure are not well understood. This project will use a common sequencing method to identify genetic patterns associated with bud failure, furthering our understanding of the disorder and its link to aging.