Sam Humphrey

Bio

My research is on improving propagation efficiency of strawberries in controlled environments. By adjusting the environmental conditions (like light intensity, carbon dioxide concentration, or temperature) we can induce strawberry “mother plants” to produce clonal “daughter plants” more efficiently. In some of my experiments, I’m trying to get daughter plants to develop roots as quickly and efficiently as possible. In other experiments I grow mother plants, and am trying to see how well they can produce daughter plants when I vary the lighting and carbon dioxide concentration. As a whole, these several experiments will shed light on how we can improve efficiency in multiple ways: harvesting more tips per mother plant, and rapidly rooting plug plants. We hope this research will empower nurseries to use controlled environments to produce cheaper, cleaner daughter plants.

I earned my Bachelor’s degree in Plant Science with an emphasis in Plant Health and Protection from the University of Florida, where I also conducted research at a number of labs, including controlled environment and root physiology labs. I cultivated my love of controlled environments in my extracurricular work, designing growth chambers for the NASA Growing Beyond Earth Maker Contest and writing about growth chambers for Astrobotany.com, among other projects. I am currently a Masters Student in the Hernández Lab, Graduate Student Fellow at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, and Visiting Scholar at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.