Profile

• Time Zone

  Eastern

  
  
• Organization

  University of Georgia, Athens

  
  
• Role

  Scientist Mentor: I will mentor teams of students online

  
  
• Research Interests (300 words)

  My research interest is in understanding plant growth under environmentally stressful conditions such as drought, flooding and poor soils. With global population levels rising producing enough food for everybody is a growing challenge. One of the ways to meet this challenge and increase global food production is to breed sturdier crops that can tolerate environmental stress better than current high yielding crop varieties. To do this however, first we need to know more about the traits affecting plant performance at stressful conditions and the genetic basis of these traits.

  
  
• Profile Question 1

  What is best about being a scientist?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 1 here (300 words):

  I'm a very curious person, I always want to know how everything works. As a scientist I get to indulge in my curiousity by figuring out why and how plants work and I even get paid for it! Being a scientists means you have a very varied job (doing experiments, analysing data, working in large and small teams) and I enjoy that tremendously.

  
  
• Profile Question 2

  What is your favorite plant? Why?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 2 here (300 words):

  I like plants that do weird things. My favorite is Rhizanthella gardneri or the Western Underground Orchid. What you should know is that many plants have a beneficial interaction with soil fungi belowground, plants give sugars to the fungus and the fungus gives nutrients from the soil to the plant. This little orchid hijacks that interaction, giving nothing to the fungus and taking the nutrients and sugars from it. It's simultaneously parasitizing the fungus for nutrients and via the fungus the plants that give it sugars. As it doesn't need leaves to capture light it has none. It only exists as a root underground, even flowering there. Pretty weird.

  
  
• Profile Question 3

  What is the coolest thing you have discovered or learned about plants?

  
  
• Answer the question you selected for profile question 3 here (300 words):

  Most of the megafauna that existed during the past ice ages has gone extinct. There are no more giant Elk, huge ground sloths, Mammoths and such. I have discovered that since the last ice age, when these animals still lived, the quality of plant material as food has gone down tremendously (even though the quantity increased). This, combined with human hunting, could have led to the extinction of these species.

  
  
• Availability

  I am NOT available, please temporarily remove me from the available mentor list

  
  
• Capacity: How many teams at a time are you comfortable working with?

  1

  
  

Recent Posts

hvchsluccifall2018 project 11 Andries Temme Nov 5, 2018

Hi guys, sorry for the late reply! Too bad you're not finding any pollen on the slides. I wonder if the anthers could maybe not be producing pollen yet? Some flowers have the male parts develop later then the female parts of the flower.…

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Hi guys, sorry for the late reply! Too bad you're not finding any pollen on the slides. I wonder if the anthers could maybe not be producing pollen yet? Some flowers have the male parts develop later then the female parts of the flower. Alternatively maybe there's something going wrong with your pollen finding technique? Sometimes a flower produces so much pollen that you can see a light dusting of it on the petals below the anthers. If you take a sample of those you know the water should contain pollen. If you then can't find them under the microscope you know your method for finding them has an issue.

Have you been able to find any pollen at all?

Best, Andries

hvchsluccifall2018 project 11 Andries Temme Oct 19, 2018

Hi Nadia, Owen and Tyler,

Looks like you guys are busy with a nice experiment! I know your teacher makes you write comments here on plantingscience but lets try and get a conversation going It might be fun and I'm person just like…

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Hi Nadia, Owen and Tyler,

Looks like you guys are busy with a nice experiment! I know your teacher makes you write comments here on plantingscience but lets try and get a conversation going It might be fun and I'm person just like you. You've certainly got an interesting question on flower size and pollen count. Two questions to think about.

1. How are you defining flower size, diameter or weight? Because you could imagine both a heavier flower to have more pollen or a larger diameter (more attractive to pollinators) to have more pollen.

2. Flowers take time to develop. Pollen doesn't magically appear on the anther ready to go, it takes time to grow. How are you going to make sure each flower is at the same age?

Regarding the very handy procedure Carlos suggested, why do you think you're not finding any pollen?

Let me know what you think about the questions!

All the best, Andries

hvchsluccifall2018 project 11 Andries Temme Oct 1, 2018

Hi Owen, Tyler and Nadia, I'm Andries I'm a scientist at the University of Georgia where I study sunflowers. Particularly which traits of different sunflower varieties (varieties grown for oil or seeds) makes them do well under poor…

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Hi Owen, Tyler and Nadia, I'm Andries I'm a scientist at the University of Georgia where I study sunflowers. Particularly which traits of different sunflower varieties (varieties grown for oil or seeds) makes them do well under poor conditions (too dry, too wet, low nutrients in the soil).

Those look like great ideas on pollen! As scientists we try to do experiments to see if we correctly understand the way plants work. Based on what we know about how plants work we make predictions of what will happen or should be and then we test those predictions.

Can you tell me a little bit more about why you’ve come to these predictions?

Good luck!

-Andries