One week to go

Our trip date is less than a week away, April 16th and things are picking up around our lab with organizing supplies and tying up loose ends. But, before I go on let me first introduce you to the rest of the team. Besides myself the IRB Tomato group includes, Dr. Patricia Bedinger from Colorado State University who is the lead PI on the project, Dr. Bruce McClure from the University of Missouri, Dr. Roger Chetelat from the University of California at Davis (also curator of the Tomato Genetics Resource Center), Drs. Jocelyn Rose and Gloria Lopez Casado from Cornell, Dr. Esther Van der Knaap and Reynaldo Nunez, from The Ohio State University Agriculture Research and Development Center (OARDC), Steve Stack also from Colorado State University, and Phillip Kear from the Center International de la Papa who is currently working at the University Missouri. Joss will be the only one not able to make this trip. Besides Roger, Phillip, and Reynaldo who is Peruvian, this will be our first field expedition to Peru.

The first bit of business after the late arrival into Lima is to meet with our Peruvian counterparts from the Center International de la Papa (CIP), Merideth Bonierbale and David Tay. Merideth is in charge of the Germplasm Enhancement and Crop Improvement Division at CIP which is primarily involved with developing improved tuber germplasm and fostering their use with small scale growers. A student from Merideth's group, Phillip Kear, has been working at The University of Missouri with Bruce McClure since the fall of last year. David Tay is the lead on another division at CIP, The Genetic Resource Characterization and Conservation. He and Merideth have been very helpful on-the-ground contact for Pat and Roger, especially with getting us contacts for housing, transportation and permitting.

This trip will be the fifth meeting of the minds for the IRB Tomato group, as it were, and a fairly stated pen ultimate one at that. We hope to accomplish a hefty amount of field work on some key population of wild tomatoes, as well as extend our research to a broader scientific group with a Symposium on Reproductive Barriers in the Solanaceae. Our stay in Lima happens to also coincide with a cytogenetics meeting. Fortuitous for Steve, who will be in attendance, since this is not only his expertise but passion.

For those interested this weblog will be advertised on some external links besides IRB Tomato. The Sol Genomics Network, Solanaceae Source, and the Tomato Genetics Resource Center have all been kind enough to acknowledge our efforts and we encourage those of you to learn more about them and the amazing resources they provide for work like ours to be possible. We thank them.