a
Staff
Gail
Somodi, Plant Breeding & Plant Pathology Asst.
Rosa
Ayala, Agricultural Assistant
Karen
Pearce, Biological Scientist (retired)
Cathy
Provenzano
Cathy
comes to the tomato breeding program with over 15 years of horticultural
experience. She has a B.S. in
Horticultural Sciences from the University of Florida and started her
horticultural career in 1984 in the Environmental Horticulture Department at UF.
From there she transferred to the Agronomy Department as a Biological
Scientist with the peanut breeding program.
She spent three years with this program and was instrumental in the
analysis of several thousand peanut lines for fatty acid content and market
quality. When this grant funded position ended she moved to the
Horticultural Sciences department as a Biological Scientist in Postharvest
Physiology.
Cathy
left UF in 1997 and moved first to California and then Ohio.
During this time she remarried and had a third child.
While in Ohio, Cathy continued to work in horticulture at Ohio State
University as a Research Assistant in Plant Pathology.
Due to medical needs of her newborn daughter, she moved back to
Gainesville where her daughter could have specialized treatment at Shands
Hospital.
While waiting for an
appropriate position in horticulture to open, Cathy went to work for a small
start-up company that was making man-made diamonds in association with the
University of Florida. This company eventually relocated to Sarasota and Cathy
and family followed. This move
proved to be advantageous as Cathy was able to once again pursue her chosen and
much loved profession in horticulture. She
is excited to be a part of the tomato breeding team at GCREC.
B.S. Horticultural
Sciences, University of Florida
Contact Cathy by email at CBProvenzano@ifas.ufl.edu
Gail
Somodi
Gail worked at the GCREC from 1986 until 1998 on a USDA CBAG (Caribbean Basin Advisory Group) grant with Dr. Jeffrey Jones (bacteriologist) and Dr. Jay Scott (tomato breeder) as the principal investigators. Work focused on developing methods to screen tomato seedlings for resistance to bacterial spot and wilt. After a brief 2 ½ year hiatus in North Carolina she came back in 2000 refreshed and ready to work for Jay again in the
Tomato Breeding Program as a part-time plant pathology assistant.
B.S., University of Delaware
M.S. Plant Pathology, University of Georgia
Contact Gail by email at gcsomodi@ifas.ufl.edu
John M.
Petti
John first worked at GCREC in
1994, extracting DNA from tomato leaf tissue for Dr. Mikel Stevens (at that time
a post-doc for Dr. Scott). He moved to Gainesville in 1995 to attend the
University of Florida where he earned a M.S. in entomology. After working
18 months as an intern for Dow AgroSciences, John accepted his position with the Tomato Breeding
Program and is working on completing his 7th season with the program.
His responsibilities include
raising the nearly 50,000 seedlings that are grown each season. Of these,
approximately 20,000 are planted in the field and include from 1,100 to 1,400
genotypes, excluding experimental lines. While selecting the best of the
crop with Dr. Scott, John gives each plant at least a glance though many get a
thorough evaluation, often including a taste.
It is estimated that John has
tasted and rated over 2,000 fruit for their flavor composition. On a good
day, he might enjoy tasting a tomato with a fruity or floral note complementing
the more usual combinations of acid and sweet flavors, but there is always the
chance that the next tomato will taste like "dirty socks" or sometimes
even worse. By the end of a season John says, "I never want to see
another tomato as long as I live." It only takes a couple weeks
before he misses the fringe benefit of being able to pick and eat possibly the
best tasting tomatoes on the planet.
In addition to wooden
furniture design / construction / restoration (his current passion), marquetry,
stained glass, glass engraving, automobile restoration, cooking,
garnishing, and a number of other hand-crafts, John has taught himself computer
graphics arts, which he used to construct this site. To learn more about John,
click here.
B.S., University of Akron, Ohio
M.S. Entomology, University of Florida
Contact John by email at jmpe@ifas.ufl.edu
Rosa
Ayala
Rosa has worked for the Tomato Breeding
Program for almost 2 years and was recently promoted to agricultural technician.
For any given season, her responsibilities begin with making and bagging over 3
cubic yards of the soil mix that will be used to fill over 400 speedling trays,
which she also cleans and sterilizes.
She also makes the
identification labels for the 1,100 to 1,400 genotypes that are grown each
season. Beginning with sowing seed, every time plants are advanced from
one container to the next and finally to field, a different label is required.
Once the plants are staked, Rosa staples the
final label to the appropriate stake and documents the location of each line on
a map.
In addition to keeping the
field free of weeds while the plants grow, Rosa keeps the greenhouse plants
tied, collects pollen, and helps emasculate and make crosses in the breeding
greenhouses.
As the season progresses, she harvests fruit from greenhouse and field selected
plants and extracts and processes the seed from them. While she is
finishing that for one season, she starts all over again for the next
season.
P.A.L. Academy, Bradenton,
Florida
Aliya
Momotaz
We are working on Aliya's
blurb, so check back soon to find out all about her.
Yuanfu Ji
We are also working on Ji's
background story.
Karen
Pearce
Karen retired after 30 years of
dedicated experience on February
28, 2003.
B.S., Ashland College (now Ashland University) in Ashland, Ohio
Contact Karen by email at kpearce@ifas.ufl.edu
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This site was created and is
maintained by John
M. Petti