Sara Stricker (00:04):
So, when people ask me, "What are you going to be?" I say, "I'm going to be a plant doctor." And they kind of laugh at me, and I'm like, "Yeah, plants get sick too, and it's a pretty important part of the industry. There's millions and billions of dollars thrown into disease control, which you don't think about as a consumer."

Graeme Li (00:24):
You're listening to the Why and How Podcast, produced by the Ontario Agricultural College at the University of Guelph, where we look to answer big questions in agriculture, food, and the environment through casual conversations rooted in research.

Graeme Li (00:39):
Hey, Jordan. How's it going? Long time no see, and I still don't see.

Jordan Terpstra (00:44):
Hey, Graeme. Yeah, it's definitely been a while. We're now in 2021. We survived 2020. How have you been?

Graeme Li (00:52):
It's been ups and downs. Online school's been different, to say the least. Haven't seen a lot of the people from the OAC from my first year. How about you?

Jordan Terpstra (01:00):
Yeah, I'd say I hate working from home, but I really have no choice. So, I've adjusted just fine. But, yeah, no. It's been, all things considered, pretty good. But this is so exciting. It's been a while since we've chatted, and it's been a while since we've been able to record a podcast. So, we're super excited about this.

Jordan Terpstra (01:19):
So, why don't you tell us a little bit about how, or for our listeners, to give some insight about how this podcast and our upcoming podcast are going to be a little bit different than our past ones?

Graeme Li (01:30):
Yeah. So, now, we're recording on an app called Zencastr, and it's all virtual due to obviously, not being able to record on campus, unfortunately. And the fall was a little busy, so we took some time off, and now, we're rallying for the winter. So, we'll see how it goes.

Jordan Terpstra (01:45):
Absolutely. Yeah, and I think, for the most part, really for our listeners, really won't change much. Obviously, when we were in the studio, we had better quality mics. So, there might be a little bit of difference in sound quality for some of our guests and for me included. I know you have a nice, fancy mic. So, you sound good, but yeah, so I think, for the most part, our podcast really won't change. We still have some really amazing guests from the OAC to chat about food, agriculture, environment, everything in between. So, we're still answering all those why and how questions, which is super exciting.

Graeme Li (02:21):
And today, we have Sara Stricker as a guest on the Why and How Podcast. Sara is a Ph.D. student from the Department of Plant Agriculture. She also recently participated in the 3MT competition at the University of Guelph, a competition where participants must present their graduate thesis in three minutes or less in a plain language format. Sara actually won the competition for the university, which is pretty cool. So, Sara, what was your thesis on?

Sara Stricker (02:48):
So, I'm doing a Ph.D. research-based thesis, so that means that I'm going to be doing fieldwork and experiments, and then I write it up into a big report, book at the end, which is called a thesis. My project is focused on trying to improve the management of a disease called Stemphylium leaf blight of onion. It's caused by a fungus, and it infects the leaves of onion and leads to fewer, smaller bulbs. So, onion producers are really interested in managing this disease.

Graeme Li (03:23):
Interesting. And what stage are you on in the research roughly right now?

Sara Stricker (03:27):
I should be finished. I was hoping to finish in December of 2020, but right now, I'm just at home writing up the thesis and making graphs, doing stats. So, hopefully, in the next few months, you can call me Dr. Sara.

Jordan Terpstra (03:42):
How exciting.

Graeme Li (03:43):
I've always wanted to be called a doctor. Maybe one day. So, why is it important that we stop this disease?

Sara Stricker (03:49):
So, stop is something that we probably can't do. We can't say eradicate because completely wiping out a living organism from the face of the planet is a pretty big ask for anyone. And this is a fungus. It's a living organism, so we say manage. So, we try to manage it so that it goes below a certain economic threshold so that it's no longer causing economic losses to the growers.

Sara Stricker (04:15):
So, in this case, it's important to manage this disease, not necessarily because it causes some decreased yields. Because it makes sense. If you have a plant, and your leaves die, your plant is going to be smaller, right? So, you're going to have smaller onions. However, a bigger problem with this disease is that in most onion-producing groups they apply something called a sprout inhibitor. So, it is something that's applied to the leaves of the onions at the end of the season, and it has to move down into the onion bulb. And it prevents that onion from sprouting in storage.

Sara Stricker (04:52):
And you can imagine, if you go to the grocery store, if you find onions that are sprouting or starting to grow leaves, you're not going to buy those onions. They're no longer what you want to cut up and put in your frying pan, right? So, if you can't apply your sprout inhibitor, you're going to not be able to sell those onions, or you're going to have to sell them sooner for a lower price.

Sara Stricker (05:13):
So, in this case, we're trying to keep green leaves on the plant at the end of the year for as long as possible so that we can get those sprout inhibitors applied at the end of the season.

Graeme Li (05:24):
And what are the sprout inhibitors made of? Is it a chemical? Is it-

Sara Stricker (05:29):
Yeah, it's a chemical. Yeah, the chemical that we often use is called maleic hydrazide. And some people get a little worried about, "Oh, my gosh. It's a chemical, and it's scary," but dihydrogen monoxide is also a chemical. That's water. So, maleic hydrazide is a product that we've been using since the 70s. It is completely healthy and harmless, and even you can use it in organic agriculture production.

Jordan Terpstra (05:53):
So, I'm actually curious. I just want to take a step back as we're talking about onions. Sara, could you actually just give us a little context with what is the growing season of an onion, and what does that look like?

Sara Stricker (06:05):
That's a good question. Yeah, I actually never really thought about how onions are produced before I did my Ph.D. In the first few months, I was reading textbooks like, "How do you grow an onion?" Yeah, so onions grow from a seed. So, the seed is actually about the size of a pepper kernel. When you grind pepper, it's about the same size as that.

Sara Stricker (06:28):
So, you plant those in May, late April if you can get in. The thing is, is the planting season starts whenever you can get the tractor into the field without it sinking. We grow onions in what's called muck soil, and you can imagine, it's mucky. It's very moist, high organic material, lots of water. It's literally a drained marsh.

Sara Stricker (06:56):
So, as soon as the snowmelt has drained enough from that field, you're going to want to get your onions in. So, it kind of depends seasonally. If you have a really wet spring, you're going to have to delay your planting. So, approximately May. So, the onions will grow from May, June, July August into September. You might be able to harvest end of August, early September, maybe in October. It really depends on the growing season and when you are able to get in and get planting.

Sara Stricker (07:32):
Onions do this really weird thing in that they tell you when they're ready to harvest. They naturally do a thing called lodging. So the leaves are straight up in the air. It kind of looks like your at home aloe plant. They're green, sort of cylindrical leaves straight up in the air but not spiky. That's the best way I can describe them.

Graeme Li (07:56):
Like a green onion.

Sara Stricker (07:56):
Yeah, like a green onion, but much bigger. They actually grow about three feet tall. The leaves are pretty tall.

Graeme Li (08:04):
Oh, wow.

Sara Stricker (08:04):
So, at a certain point, all of the leaves lie down on the ground. They lodge. They all fall down, and that's a natural process. So, it's called lodging, and once the onions have lodged, you just have to kind of wait, and they will naturally dry out. We can increase that speed of drying out by going around, and there's a special machine that pulls the onions a little bit out of the dirt but keeps them on the dirt. It just kind of shakes off a bit of the dirt, and then they lay out in the sun for a few weeks. And then we collect them.

Sara Stricker (08:41):
It's a lot easier to let the sun dry them than to have to bring them inside and use gasoline blowers and stuff to dry them off. But that's a possibility too in some areas.

Graeme Li (08:52):
That's cool. I always loved hearing about specialized farm equipment because they're so almost random. You never think someone invented a machine to do exactly that.

Sara Stricker (09:02):
Yeah, there is a special machine that even goes and just pull ... So, it rolls the onions over series of blades just to remove the remnants of the leftover leaves. It's weird. I can't even explain it. It just looks like a conveyor belt of knives.

Jordan Terpstra (09:17):
Well, and it's so cool even just to hear. Onions are such common crops, and people have them in the kitchen. There's so many different types in the grocery store, and a lot of people don't think about how they're grown or how they're harvested. So, it's very cool. So, thank you for sharing that, and I'm glad to hear. It's cool to hear how onions are grown.

Graeme Li (09:41):
Yeah, how did you choose to study onions for your Ph.D.?

Sara Stricker (09:43):
That was basically decided by who I wanted to do my Ph.D. with. I did my master's of science also here at the University of Guelph in OAC but in the School of Environmental Sciences. So, I had done a project. It was with Dr. Tom Hsiang, and I worked with another fungus that was infecting turf grass, like on golf courses.

Sara Stricker (10:06):
And so I had a really cool experience with that, and I worked with a specific product called CIVITAS harmonizer. It's made of food-grade oil, and it's supposed to decrease disease. So, because of my experience with that, I heard that this other professor also at the university, Dr. Mary Ruth McDonald, in plant agriculture, she was interested in the same product but on onions.

Sara Stricker (10:36):
So, that was kind of the logical switch over. The project that I'm doing now, we did look at the product, CIVITAS harmonizer, on the onions. It wasn't as promising for onions as we had hoped. So, we are looking at different options. But that's sort of how I moved from one crop, if you want to think of turf as a crop, from one plant to a different one.

Graeme Li (11:04):
So, the CIVITAS harmonizer prevents disease, is that correct?

Sara Stricker (11:11):
It's a bit complicated. CIVITAS harmonizer is proposed to be a product that can induce systemic resistance. This is not a very good analogy, and this is the boundary between scientific communication and layperson speak. You have to be careful because oversimplification sometimes leads to improper analogies. But essentially, induces systemic resistance, makes the plants better able to fight the disease, so like we have a flu shot to help us fight the disease.

Graeme Li (11:52):
Kind of like a vaccine.

Sara Stricker (11:54):
Yes. That's why I'm hesitant to say like a vaccine because when people hear I'm giving a vaccine to onions, then they get all scared. And it's really not that. It's just a product that can improve the health of the plant.

Graeme Li (12:09):
Like a supplement, then.

Sara Stricker (12:11):
Yes, a supplement. Supplement sounds nicer. It's a less scary word.

Graeme Li (12:15):
Giving a protein powder to a plant, but not proteins.

Sara Stricker (12:20):
Yeah. It's really hard to wrap your mind around some of these concepts if you haven't been totally immersed in them. With the Three Minute Thesis competition, I got some feedback from one of the judges that I bordered on the edge of oversimplification with my project, the way I describe my project. And accurate, you know? It's hard to know because every time you simplify something, you're losing detail. And so, you're actually making yourself more incorrect by simplifying.

Sara Stricker (12:59):
So, yeah, the Three Minute Thesis competition was really difficult for me. And even in this, this is a plain-language conversation. I have to be careful about what I say because if it's oversimplified, it could be misinterpreted by someone else.

Graeme Li (13:14):
So, what is the process for the Three Minute Thesis competition? How do you prepare for that, and how do you really try and make sure that you don't oversimplify?

Sara Stricker (13:23):
That's a good question. I actually tried for the Three Minute Thesis first. I think it was 2015. And I placed fourth out of four people in the OAC heat. So, there's a couple heats. So, there's different levels. So, the OAC is one of the groups of the University of Guelph. The OAC has six departments, and so they did an OAC-level heat in which all grad students are invited from those six departments to compete against each other.

Sara Stricker (13:56):
The first year I competed, there was only four people that competed. It was pretty new, and no one knew anything about it. This year, I guess 2020, I competed there was ... I think there was 17 people we competed against. It was pretty stiff competition and really good competition. I was really impressed by the level of professionalism and accuracy and just the different projects that are being produced by these grad students in these very different departments.

Sara Stricker (14:25):
The grad students from these different departments give their three-minute summary, and you get to have one slide. So, it can't be anything that's interactive. It's just a stagnate, one slide. Often, it's a picture or a series of pictures, and then you just gather in a room. You have a timer and a set of judges. And the judges were all collected. They're selected based on people that are educated but layperson. They're from different genres of education. Yeah, so it was a really big honor to participate in that and then to move onto the university heat.

Sara Stricker (15:02):
So, that was supposed to take place where all of the winners from the OAC heat and the CBS heat and the vet school, I think they had their own heat. Can't remember the other ones. They were supposed to gather together in-person and do our presentations, same format in-person. And then COVID happened, and everything shut down. It was kind of funny because April was my birthday. I had to cancel my 30th birthday party.

Jordan Terpstra (15:40):
Oh no!

Sara Stricker (15:40):
I was sad.

Jordan Terpstra (15:42):
Tragic.

Sara Stricker (15:43):
Then, my wife and I had been planning a wedding, which we actually ended up eloping the previous October because the wedding planning was really stressful. So, we were planning a wedding and a wedding reception after our elopement. So, we had a wedding reception planned in April, and we canceled that. And I was sad about that.

Sara Stricker (16:08):
So, that sucked. And then I got the email that they canceled the Three Minute Thesis competition, and I cried. I was so sad. I'm like, "Closing the library, that sucked. Not going to campus, that sucked. The Three Minute Thesis, no!"

Jordan Terpstra (16:24):
That really did it in, eh?

Graeme Li (16:26):
Now, it's real, right?

Sara Stricker (16:28):
That's what did it end. Now, it's a pandemic. I grieved the loss of that for a week or two, and then I reached out to the organizers and said, "Are we going to do it virtually?" And they said, "I don't know. That's a good question. And let me get back to you." And they kind of worked around and figured out a way that we did it virtually.

Sara Stricker (16:55):
They gave us, all of the competitors, some guidelines of how to film ourselves, and it's a little easier to time yourself when you're filming yourself because you can see the timer. But they challenge you to try to not read off a script and make eye contact and point to your imaginary slide, which is now going to be digitally imposed next to you. And they did a really good job of stitching the videos and our slides together and making them look nice and professional. And they posted them online.

Sara Stricker (17:30):
They opened it up to a people's choice award. So, you could send it to all your friends and family and ask then, "Vote for me." And they also had a judging panel. I think one of those was the Green Party member, which I was just ... I was a little star-struck by that, like, "Oh, my gosh! I voted for you." Yeah, and they did a Zoom reveal of who they choose.

Graeme Li (18:01):
And for anyone interested in watching these presentations, they're actually available on the university's websites. You can probably just Google Sara Stricker Three-Minute Thesis, and they'll show up.

Sara Stricker (18:12):
Yeah, that's a good plug for the university's website. Yeah, I think it's actually really good to have those as an archive too for next year's competitors because then you know who the winners were or what was good, what was something that could be improved upon. And I've even said this for we should be recording and storing defenses and things for master's students and Ph.D. students to know what to expect, what kind of questions to expect. It's a new resource created by a pandemic.

Graeme Li (18:45):
Yeah, I'm always curious. What's a Ph.D. defense going to look like, or what was the master's defense like?

Sara Stricker (18:50):
My master's defense, we essentially gathered in a small meeting room. I gave a 30-minute presentation slideshow about my two years of work. And then said, "Anyone have questions?" And the audience can ask questions for the first round, and then it goes to a closed round. Then, your panel of examiners ... So, they'll be the professor that you worked with and then an external examiner, so someone who you've never worked with. They will and ask you questions.

Sara Stricker (19:28):
And based on your answers, if you gave good enough answers, they'll say, "Yes! You defended congratulations." If you did not give successful answers, you did not successfully defend, then you can try again. I think you get to try a second time. You can go back and prepare, change all your edits that they want you to change, and you can defend again.

Sara Stricker (19:52):
But usually, your advisor, it's in their best interest to make sure you defend. So, they will prepare you. It would be pretty embarrassing to be a professor and be like, "Yeah, I think he's good enough. She's ready to go." And then someone else says, "No." So, I think the Ph.D. thesis defense is pretty similar, but the people you need to impress, there's usually four people, I think, instead of the MSC. I think it's three. I can't remember the exact numbers. Don't take this for concrete data, but yeah.

Sara Stricker (20:31):
It's a presentation again, and then oral questions from a panel of experts who also already have their Ph.D. So, essentially, you have to convince other people that you are at their level to be a Ph.D.

Graeme Li (20:50):
Got to join the doctor club by convincing the doctors.

Sara Stricker (20:55):
Exactly, yeah. And one thing I like about all defenses is that they're supposed to be public. The scientific community, anyone, even a layperson, should be able to attend your defense. So, now that we have opened this up and now, defenses are able to be online because of COVID, which was never a thing before, anyone can participate.

Sara Stricker (21:19):
I had a friend watch a defense from Brazil the other day. So, it kind of makes science more accessible, but also, if you were to defend your thesis behind closed doors and no one watched, people could kind of look at you and be like, "Oh, was it really good enough?" You get more credibility if more people watch you and more people say, "Oh, yeah. That was really good."

Graeme Li (21:47):
For sure. It makes it more open and engageable, I guess. If someone doubts you, you can just show them the recording.

Sara Stricker (21:54):
Exactly, yeah. And science is something that should be arguable. The reason why we call it a defense is because you're supposed to defend your theories. People are supposed to argue you. So, if no one asks any questions, and no one fights you on this, then you have nothing to defend. It's not really a defense. You need people to challenge your theories that you've come up with over your two years master's or your four-year Ph.D.

Sara Stricker (22:26):
That's what the defense is. It's being able to stand up and say, "This is what I think. This is why I think it, and everyone else is wrong until I'm proven wrong." Because that's what science is. Science never says that this is the absolute truth. It is the truth until someone else proves me wrong.

Graeme Li (22:47):
Exactly. And in some ways, the role of other scientists is to prove you wrong.

Sara Stricker (22:51):
Exactly. Yeah. So, that's what a defense is. But yeah, the Three-Minute Thesis is more about getting people interested in the different types of sciences, I think, and showing that science is accessible. Because if science stays this ivory-tower, higher-than-thou, I'm-so-smart-I-don't-even-need-you, then that's when you get Flat Earthers and anti-vaxxers and people who just don't believe in masks or whatever.

Sara Stricker (23:31):
When you don't understand science or think scientists are unobtainable or aloof or they don't care about you, that's when you're going to fight against them. But scientists aren't that. They are looking, and I hope all scientists ... We're not evil geniuses, making explosions in our underground basement laboratories. We're honestly trying to improve living conditions or understandings to then improve medicine, improve mathematical theory to then improve space travel or something.

Sara Stricker (24:13):
But every little thing that a scientist does is built on by the next scientist. So, when you're doing your thesis defense, there's a saying that you are standing on the shoulders of giants. You're standing. You're making a small step forward based on all of the researchers that have come before you. So, you're just building slowly towards the truth, which we hope to eventually achieve. Every day we are getting slightly less wrong is the idea.

Graeme Li (24:49):
Eventually, we may harvest the perfect onions forever.

Sara Stricker (24:53):
Yes! Yeah. But it's a moving target too because climate change. There's going to be a different environment 10 years down the road, so maybe the things I've come with today are not going to be applicable anymore, and someone else is going to carry that torch on forward.

Jordan Terpstra (25:12):
Sara, I was going to follow-up with this question, but we just kept having great conversation. When it comes to onions and in an Ontario context, how many farmers are out there farming onions? Is it a popular crop to be farming? What about the Canadian context as well?

Sara Stricker (25:28):
This is a defense question. So, onions are a very valuable crop. Actually, onions have been culturally very important in human history. We've been growing onions for over 5,000 years. They're etched into the pyramids. They were fed to the people building the pyramids even because they gave them strength. They've been used in medicinal remedies.

Sara Stricker (25:59):
And in Canada, well, because we grow onions on such a specific type of soil, you only really find that in Ontario and Quebec. So, between Ontario and Quebec, we're growing 80% of Canada's onions. So, the total amount of onions that Canada produces in total world production, they produce about 117 million tons of onions. So, that's a lot of onions. And Canada accounts for about 7% of that.

Graeme Li (26:43):
Oh, wow. That's a good chunk of onions.

Sara Stricker (26:47):
A good chunk of onions, yeah. And in Canada, it's approximately 14,000 acres of onions. So, that's about 260,000 tons.

Graeme Li (27:01):
Professor Barry Micallef will be very happy to know that despite teaching online, I know that onions grow in the Holland Marsh in Ontario.

Sara Stricker (27:10):
Yes! That's where I did my research, yeah.

Graeme Li (27:12):
Those muck soils.

Sara Stricker (27:14):
Muck soil, yeah. Yeah, so the farm gate value, I think, is according to Statistics Canada, 2018, they're valued at about 88 million for Canada.

Jordan Terpstra (27:28):
Wow.

Sara Stricker (27:28):
So, it's a pretty valuable crop considering you can buy a bag of onions at the grocery store for five bucks. That doesn't seem like a very valuable crop, but it is valuable in numbers, right? So, Ontario and Quebec produces the majority of that. And because it's such as specific type of soil, we only for a few different areas, like the Holland Marsh, the Keswick Marsh, that can grow them. So, it's really important to manage the disease where we have it because it's not like we could just pick up and grow them in Alberta. We don't have the soil there.

Sara Stricker (28:08):
So, we have to kind of stick with where we are, work under the conditions that we have, and find management tactics that are going to work for us here.

Jordan Terpstra (28:17):
That's such an interesting point that you bring up because ... And I would think that having or researching in areas like you are is super important because a crop like wheat is grown so many places. I don't know wheat that well, but it's a very common crop versus, yeah, if you only have a certain type of soil that you can grow in and it's a very small area, then yeah, you would want to ensure that you're doing plenty of research to ensure that, yeah, as you say, managing those disease the best that we can, right? So, that's very interesting.

Sara Stricker (28:49):
In certain crops, an extreme example of this happening was Plum Pox Virus on stone fruit. So, the peach industry, I don't know if you know this about Canada and Ontario, but peaches can only be grown in a very, very small area of Ontario because they're a pretty warm-season crop. So, it's in the Niagara region. So, there's actually a bunch of orchards that were completely wiped out because they had this virus, and it's a tree. You had to cut it down. You had to burn the tree. And those orchards are just completely gone because of a plant disease.

Sara Stricker (29:28):
So, when people ask me, "What are you going to be?" I say, "I'm going to be a plant doctor." And they kind of laugh at me. I'm like, "Yeah, plants get sick too, and it's a pretty important part of the industry. There's millions and billions of dollars thrown into disease control, which you don't think about as a consumer."

Graeme Li (29:48):
No one will be laughing when there's no peaches left on the shelves.

Sara Stricker (29:51):
Yeah, everyone would be pretty sad if there was no peaches or no onions. Then you would start to notice. But I was also part of the Food from Thought Initiative through the OAC. And so, it really got us thinking about the disconnection, the project I was doing, the disconnection of urban people with their food. We don't know how onions were grown. We don't know how peaches are grown. How does it get to the farm to my plate?

Sara Stricker (30:22):
And I think that's an important part, what scientists need to be doing. We need to be doing the plain language communication. We need to be doing things like the Three-Minute Thesis that make us practice plain language communication because we have such a disconnect between our food systems. When you have a disconnect between how your food is produced, you're going to demand things that might be unattainable. If everyone were to say, "Oh, I want 100% organic agriculture," well, is that actually something we can do? Do you know what goes into organic agriculture? Do you know what limitations are going to be there?

Sara Stricker (31:01):
I do think organic agriculture is an important aspect of agriculture, and we can learn a lot from it, but if we were to go 100% organic agriculture tomorrow, we would have world hunger more than we already have. So, if we understand the limitations of our food productions, then maybe we'll have less fear of things like pesticides. My research involved fungicides, and even talking on the phone with my mom, she's like, "Fungicides? There's chemicals on my onions. Am I going to get sick from these fungicides?"

Sara Stricker (31:34):
It's like, "You've been eating onions for 50 years, and now you're worried because I said the word fungicide?" We're all using fungicides. Otherwise, we would have no food to feed the country.

Graeme Li (31:47):
Yeah, it's interesting. There's so many small little parts of agriculture that I think it's fair to say that no one in elementary school was thinking, "Oh, I want to be a plant pathologist or a weed scientist." But then you realize slowly how crucial it actually is to have those people and the amount of research that goes into it and the amount of money that it actually saves and the amount of just necessity there is for these people.

Sara Stricker (32:14):
We need more scientists. I recently gave my niece a Christmas present, and so I gave her this scientist Barbie. It's really cute. She was excited about it, so gave her a scientist Barbie. She has all these princes Barbies, and I said, "You know, there's more jobs available for scientists than there are for princesses."

Jordan Terpstra (32:42):
That's quite funny.

Graeme Li (32:43):
And, of course, there's always the perks of being a scientist, like, for example, did you get free onions for a while while researching them?

Sara Stricker (32:50):
Oh, yeah. I [inaudible 00:32:52] more onions than I could ever eat. I brought bags home for everyone. So, funny thing I've learned also through producing onions and being involved in food agriculture, we actually only see a small amount or small phenotype of onions. We also grow carrots in the Holland Marsh. When you imagine a carrot, there's a specific length, width, shape you're expecting, right? You know what a carrot looks like. It looks like the carrot emoji Apple made or Bugs Bunny would eat.

Sara Stricker (33:29):
But that's not what a lot of carrots look like. They are branched. They're bent. They're bigger. They're colored. They're wonky, and so much of that gets wasted. They get culled from that because they don't fit what the consumer is expecting, the Bugs Bunny carrot. And the same thing with onions. There are tiny, tiny onions. There are giant onions, and it's like a normal distribution. There are some that are small, some that are very large, and a lot that are medium.

Sara Stricker (34:03):
And the medium ones get sold. The large and the small get destroyed. Some of them in some areas you can turn them into onion powder, but most of them go into a cull pile. So, I brought home a bagful of giant onions for my mom, and it blew her mind. One was the size of a bowling ball.

Jordan Terpstra (34:27):
Oh, my goodness.

Sara Stricker (34:28):
[crosstalk 00:34:28]. I'm like, "Yeah. They can grow pretty big, but you don't see them because they've been culled." There's literally a size diameter maximum, and anything bigger than that is not going to get sold. So, yeah, I had lots of onions.

Sara Stricker (34:43):
And another benefit of science, and if you do a thesis-based or research-based master's, is that you learn skills like, yes, I know a ridiculous amount about onions right now. But that doesn't mean my life is going to revolve around onions for the rest of my life. I can go to any crop because I learned research skills. I learned how to look at data and tease out a result, figure out statistics, what is actually different here, what counts as an outlier, what seemed a little bit weird, question my results, question other people's results. And that is a skill that you learn when you're doing science. It's not necessarily just being an expert on one topic. It's being an expert on mental gymnastics.

Graeme Li (35:36):
So, what is it like doing a Ph.D. from the start to finish? Is it stressful, hard, or even fun at times?

Sara Stricker (35:44):
Oh, it's so easy.

Jordan Terpstra (35:44):
A thing I've never heard someone say about a Ph.D.

Sara Stricker (35:52):
Yeah, it's easy. Everyone should have one. No, it's pretty daunting. So, at the beginning of your Ph.D., you're doing a lot of reading and learning about that specific project because, like I said, I had to learn how to grow onions. You have to start from scratch and then build up from there. You have to learn where the gap is. You have to look at the current literature and look at what's missing.

Sara Stricker (36:24):
So, you start with a literature review. You write up everything that you can find on that specific topic. So I wrote a lit review. It's like 100 pages. And then, based on that, be like, "These are the questions that still need to be answered." That's the beginning of your Ph.D. So, you propose, this is the research I'm going to do to fill those questions, fill those gaps in the research.

Sara Stricker (36:47):
So, you think up some experiments, and you pitch it to your advisor. And they say, "Yeah, that sounds good. Maybe this needs to be tweaked." And that's why you have an advisory committee. I have Dr. Mary Ruth McDonald and Dr. Bruce Gossen as my advisors. But then I also have Dr. Sarah Pethybridge. She's a researcher at Cornell University. She's on my committee, and Doctor Peter Pauls from Plant Agriculture. And he is a dry bean breeder kind of researcher, but he also does research with bean diseases.

Sara Stricker (37:22):
So, I get to pick who's going to be in my corner to help me with my projects. So, I pitch it to them, and they can say yay or nay or give help along the way. They advise. And then you start doing your experiments and collecting data. Somewhere along that line, about two years in or a year in, I guess, you have to do what's called a qualifying exam. And there's a couple different terms for this.

Sara Stricker (37:53):
Sometimes they call them ... I can't remember the name. We'll call it a qualifying exam. That's what we call it. So, you have to essentially prove that you're smart enough to be a Ph.D. candidate. Up until that point, you're called a Ph.D. student. So, you're not a candidate yet. You're just a Ph.D. student. So, you've done your lit review. You've maybe started some experiments. You have to pass your qualifying exam to become a Ph.D. candidate.

Sara Stricker (38:26):
And it is, or for me, it was a grueling two days of written and one day of oral questioning. And I had to lock myself in a room and write for two days based on these questions my committee had given me, and then sit in a room. And they went round and round and round, like one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four, asking me questions. And it just kept getting harder and harder and harder until one point, I actually cried during my qualifying exam because I just broke.

Sara Stricker (39:05):
I was under so much stress, and they asked me for a definition question, a really easy question. And I spouted it out like a robot. And Mary Ruth asked me. She was like, "Really?" They had asked for two definitions, and I had given them in the wrong order, gave the right definitions, just the wrong order. And I just burst into tears and had to leave the room and calm down for a few minutes.

Sara Stricker (39:38):
So, is it stressful? Yes. It's stressful, but I passed my qualifying exam. They sent me out of the room afterwards, and they said, "Yes, she's smart enough to be a Ph.D. candidate." And then afterwards, you just go back and continue doing your experiments like nothing happened. It was funny because I was in the field the day before and the day after. Nothing changed.

Sara Stricker (40:09):
But yeah, that's when you are then called a Ph.D. candidate, and you do the rest of your research, collect your data, try to publish your data if you can, present at conferences. Yeah. One thing that really blew my mind going into grad school actually was that in undergrad, you're assigned readings of journal articles, right? And it's like Simpson et al. or whatever. I don't know. That's just a name that came up. Simpson et al., 2017. It's a citation in a paper you've written.

Sara Stricker (40:45):
Simpson was probably a grad student. The first name is usually whoever physically did the work, which is usually grad students. The last name in the long list of ... It was Simpson and Stricker and McDonald and whatever. Whoever's the last name is usually the advisor. But yeah, so I have a publication now that you can cite Stricker et al., 2020. I'm so excited about that.

Jordan Terpstra (41:14):
Very cool.

Sara Stricker (41:16):
Because someday somebody's going to be writing their thesis or a paper on onions, and they're going to write, Stricker et. al., 2020. That's me.

Jordan Terpstra (41:23):
That's amazing.

Sara Stricker (41:25):
Yeah.

Graeme Li (41:26):
What's been different in the lab if you're still working in there since the big VID hit?

Sara Stricker (41:34):
Yeah. So, plant agriculture, they basically said if you're doing field trials, you can still continue your field trials because they're outside. And we can do a lot of social distancing, and we have protocols in place to continue those. So, I was able to go out into the field this summer and collect some data.

Sara Stricker (41:54):
But the lab has been pretty limited. They basically said to shut down. Whatever could be put on ice, do so. So, that was a lot of my work. So, I had been doing fungicide testing in the lab, so growing fungus on a Petri dish and exposing it to fungicides. And I have a huge collection of fungi individuals to test. So, COVID has essentially cut that down of how many I could test.

Sara Stricker (42:26):
I actually brought some Petri dishes home, and I had a little lab growing in my office. So, that was a little bit strange. But then they were allowing us to get back on campus, and I was able to complete some more experiments in the lab. It's just it cut down a bit, and there's also an element of my research where I wanted to do quantitative PCR, and it got postponed. So, that's part of why I was supposed to defend in December, and that's got pushed now to, hopefully, April.

Sara Stricker (43:02):
So, there have definitely been some delays. I'm currently sitting at home in a little cubicle that I sort of created for myself in my bedroom. I put up some bookcases, so it's my workspace. Usually, I would have access to my office or writing in a café or the library. So, it's a little bit harder to write from home because you have to be your own self-discipliner. So, taking advantage of things like the online dissertation bootcamp helped me do some writing and learn some tactics to stay focused.

Sara Stricker (43:43):
And I also tried to reach out to other grad students in my department to say, "Hey, do you want to have a Zoom call and meet me and write online?" Because it's really hard to sit and have this huge, daunting goal over me now like, "Write the thesis." You have to kind of find ways to chunk it and break it up into small pieces. And also, doing things like this, your podcast gives me something else to do and to think about in between. It's like a break.

Graeme Li (44:16):
That's fun. Just one step at a time, right?

Sara Stricker (44:18):
Exactly. Yeah.

Graeme Li (44:20):
Sara, I'd like to thank you for being on and participating in the first virtual interview of the Why and How Podcast. It's been great.

Jordan Terpstra (44:27):
Yeah, it's been such a pleasure chatting with you, Sara. And thank you to our listeners for being so patient with us. And Sara, you've been a great guest to have on our first virtual podcast.

Sara Stricker (44:37):
Thank you so much for having me.

Jordan Terpstra (44:38):
Of course.

Graeme Li (44:39):
Anything to plug?

Sara Stricker (44:40):
Follow me on TikTok. I'm sciencesara.

Jordan Terpstra (44:43):
Very cool.

Graeme Li (44:44):
Nice. For the kids. All right, thanks so much for listening. See you next week.

Graeme Li (44:50):
The Why and How Podcast is published by the Ontario Agricultural College of the University of Guelph. It is produced by Stephanie Craig and Jordan Terpstra, recorded and edited by Jakub Hyzyk and Kyle Ritchie. The host is me, Graeme Li. If you liked what you heard, be sure to leave us a review and subscribe. Thanks for listening.