Kevin Piunno: 00:03 Not just for hazelnuts but for any kind of new crop that you want to introduce. People spent years breeding a crop that'll finally work in this environment. But now you've got one, maybe 10 trees that take a long time to reach maturity. So how do you take that one to 10 trees and turn it into 40 million in the shortest time possible? Tissue culture is the right method for that. Josh Moran: 00:32 You're listening to the Why and How Podcast, produced by the Ontario Agricultural College of The University of Guelph, where we look to answer the big questions in agriculture, food, and the environment through casual conversation rooted in research. Josh Moran: 00:50 Hello everyone. I'm Josh Moran, and today we're here with a friend of the show, Jordan Terpstra. Jordan Terpstra: 00:56 Hey Josh. How's it going today? Thanks for having me. Josh Moran: 00:58 No problem. Always a pleasure. Jordan Terpstra: 01:00 What are we doing today? Who are we talking to? What are we talking about? Josh Moran: 01:02 So today we're joined by Kevin Piunno and James Nicholson. They're two Master's students from the Department of Plant Agriculture at the OAC. Kevin and James conduct the research at the Gosling Research Institute for Plant Preservation, also known as GRIPP. Josh Moran: 01:16 GRIPP works to prevent the loss of plant biodiversity through technologies like plant tissue culture, which is the process of growing plant tissues or cells in an artificial nutrient-rich gel. It's sort of like growing plants in a test tube or a Petri dish. Josh Moran: 01:30 Kevin's research is focused on developing and 3D printing storage vessels for plant tissue culture. James' work is on hazelnut micropropagation, which uses tissue culture. So their expertise makes them the right people to answer today's big question. Josh Moran: 01:43 So I'm curious, how do you guys actually know each other? Do you guys work closely together in the same lab? Are you guys friends from your Undergrad? James Nicholson: 01:48 So we met in Undergrad in the botany club. So I joined up and Kevin was the president of the Botany Club at the time. Kevin Piunno: 01:56 Yeah. Yeah. So there's not, especially for the real botany side of things of plant ag, there's not very many people on campus that do it. So it's a small world, and we ended up working in the same lab. Josh Moran: 02:11 So why use tissue culture for hazelnuts? James Nicholson: 02:13 So the problem with hazelnuts is traditional methods of propagation, so vegetative propagation through grafting, layering, or leaf cuttings, it's not an efficient method and they root poorly. It's a huge cost input and you get a low number of trees. The alternative is tissue culture. In our lab, in the GRIPP lab, we figured out a protocol how to mass produce thousands of them. And my project is now figuring out a way to root them. And this method is much more efficient than traditional methods. Josh Moran: 02:51 Very cool. You said once they're rooted, so once you start these cultures, once you get these plants growing, what happens to them after that? James Nicholson: 03:00 So then eventually, so yeah, you mass multiply them out. So they're all clones in the lab. We re-root them, which was, took me two years to figure this out. So it wasn't an easy process, but we've developed a really time-efficient protocol, so faster than traditional methods. And the next step is then you bring them out to the field and you can plant them all across Ontario. James Nicholson: 03:20 And why they want to bring hazelnuts to Ontario is that we offer the right climate. Hazelnuts like sort of a mild summer, not too hot and also a mild winter because there it can be damaged very easily to cold weather. We're right around The Great Lakes. That provides a warming effect so to prevent these dangerously cold temperatures in the winter. So that would be the next step. Josh Moran: 03:46 What is micropropagation guys? James Nicholson: 03:48 So micropropagation I guess would be you take a piece of plant tissue from outside in the field or a greenhouse, is covered with bacteria, and you sterilize it with bleach or ethanol or anything that'll kill the bacteria on it. And then you bring it into an in vitro environment, and in vitrolize in sort of in a test tube or a Petri dish and it will complete ... And then you put it into a sort of like a super nutrient solution known as media and that will cause the plant to grow in this perfect environment. Kevin Piunno: 04:19 So in theory, you can take a single cell from the biggest tree and grow an entire tree back. Josh Moran: 04:25 When you said sterile, what's the importance of being sterile? James Nicholson: 04:29 So when you bring it into this in vitro lab environment, the nutrient solution, the media that you place it on onto, it has sugar in it to help the plant grow. It has all the macro and micro nutrients as well. It's like a gel more or less. It's all containing all these compounds. And if one single bacteria is on the plant material, it'll cause bacteria to take over the gel and just completely contaminate it. It'll just grow like crazy. That's why you need a completely aseptic environment so that your plant tissue can grow nice and happy and healthy. Josh Moran: 05:03 And you said you're taking, you can theoretically take one piece, like one very, very small piece. Now how does that work? Does it develop a root system inside of this media, or what's actually going on there? Kevin Piunno: 05:14 Plant cells are called totipotent. Basically every cell in the plant is like a stem cell in a human or an animal. So with that single cell you can give it a hormone or a plant growth regulator, which will cause it to develop into a shoot. And then you can switch that hormone that'll cause roots to develop. James Nicholson: 05:36 Yeah. So in that media super nutrient solution, as Kevin mentioned, there's these hormones. There's auxins, which they have a lot of functions in the plant. But for tissue culture, they mainly induce rooting in the plants. And then there's also cytokinins which cause cell division. And that causes say for example, you take a stem piece of material, bring it in vitro, sterilize it. Cytokines will help cause it to multiply into one, two, three plants. So then what you can do is you can chop up those three plants all in a sterile environment and then put them on to their own fresh new media in a different flask or Petri dish. And then those will turn into three plants. And you keep doing that almost infinitely. And then you can go from one plant material, one piece of say a stem into a million, two million. Josh Moran: 06:25 That are genetically identical. James Nicholson: 06:27 Yep. And so that's, yep, and disease-free. So that's the benefit of tissue culture. Jordan Terpstra: 06:31 So just curious. I have an environmental biology background, but I, this stuff is very much over my head. You said cytokines. So what is a cytokine? Kevin Piunno: 06:40 Broadly auxins cause root development and cytokinins cause shoot development. And if you actually kind of get them in an even mixture, the cells don't know what to do and they just clump. It's kind of like a tumor. We call it a callous in tissue culture, but you can form this, this kind of just clump of undifferentiated cells. And then you can chop all those up and then give them a shoot hormone and then you'll get from a clump of disorganized cells, you can get hundreds of plants to come up. Josh Moran: 07:09 Well, James specifically, you're working with hazelnuts. James Nicholson: 07:11 Yup. Josh Moran: 07:12 But theoretically speaking, could you take like a totipotent, as you said earlier, a piece off of any plant and use it and genetically clone it? [inaudible 00:07:21] James Nicholson: 07:21 Yep. So absolutely. Every plant has this potential to be regenerating tissue culture and multiplied out a million times, produce a million clones. However the issue, and this is where a lot of our projects come up in the GRIPP Lab, is that every plant needs a specific formulated media for it to grow. So it needs a specific concentration of the cytokinins or auxins and certain, different types of sugars, sucrose, glucose. And that's sort of some of the massive projects, is figuring out what media recipe will allow these plants to grow. James Nicholson: 07:53 It's not so subtle. You can't just throw it on a common media. Some plants will regenerate, but some are very difficult. And they can be a whole Master's project figuring how to grow it in vitro to mass multiply them. Josh Moran: 08:05 Well, technically speaking, since you're taking just one piece of tissue, you could reproduce a thousand rare plants back to back, yeah. Kevin Piunno: 08:12 Yes, so this has actually happened with two plants in the last two years that our lab has worked on. One was the Golden Paintbrush. It's an endangered species in BC. And another one is Hill's Thistle, which is kind of up in the Tobermory area. We were sent either seeds or tissue samples and then sent them back thousands of plants which were then planted into new populations. Josh Moran: 08:37 Which is incredible. That's great. Kevin Piunno: 08:38 Yeah, they were both very successful projects. Josh Moran: 08:41 Good. Kevin Piunno: 08:41 We also have in our lab a cryopreservation tank, which is a really cool thing. So we figured out how to grow stuff in culture, optimize the media and the growth environment, which is the standard procedure. But then there's a second thing that we can add on, which is freezing the plants in liquid nitrogen and figuring out how to bring them back out of that, which is a whole different optimization step. But once we have that, we can take tissue from plants and store them in liquid nitrogen like theoretically forever. Josh Moran: 09:13 That's exactly- Jordan Terpstra: 09:14 Kind of sounds like Star Wars and Han Solo. So you're Han Soloing these plants. Kevin Piunno: 09:18 Yeah. So there was one project where on Cherry Birch, where there's 16 trees left in Canada, and we have a little sample of each one of them started in liquid nitrogen. Josh Moran: 09:29 That's very cool. Kevin Piunno: 09:30 And they can be brought back at any time. James Nicholson: 09:32 But again, this is a whole Master's project to figure out how to freeze them and then how to unthaw them because sometimes when you unthaw them, like the or when you freeze them, the ice crystals will burst the cell and will kill them. So it's a whole process. But yeah, it takes about like two, hopefully two years if you're able to finish it in that time. So yeah, there's a lot of different applications with plant tissue culture. I guess a lot people don't really know about it, so. Jordan Terpstra: 09:57 I'll be quite blunt here. I'm curious. How is your guys' research different than me just taking a clipping from one of my house plants and putting it in soil and growing it? Like what would be the difference there? Kevin Piunno: 10:07 So they're really similar. The difference is that we're doing it completely sterile in small glass or plastic containers and we're also influencing the growth using hormones. Josh Moran: 10:19 And you said the media that you're using, what's the difference between this gel and the liquid and sort of what differentiates the two? Kevin Piunno: 10:29 So the gel, we add agar or a similar kind of thing to it that makes it like jello and you stick the plants in and then it can uptake the nutrients and it's holding the plants up right. Liquid, the plants can absorb things faster. But if your plant is laying down in liquid, like the liquid gets all in the leaves and stuff, so you have to do something to hold your plants up right. And you often have to kind of shake the container around so that there's enough oxygen getting to the plants. Josh Moran: 11:00 And is your research similar to hydroponics? Kevin Piunno: 11:03 Yeah. So hydroponics is providing the water and the nutrients in a liquid form. Again, we're sterile, whereas hydroponics is not sterile, and we're also influencing the growth using hormones. James Nicholson: 11:20 And also, within the liquid media and the gel media, there's sugar in it. That helps the plants grow in a low light environment. So just simple lighting in this room, just fluorescent light bulbs, the sugar allows the plant to grow. So the plant actually gets really weird in tissue culture. It doesn't really rely on photosynthesis as much as it normally would as outside the lab. Josh Moran: 11:45 Did you always believe that you were going to be working in plant agriculture and tissue culture and whatnot? Or was it something that kind of sparked your interest later on down the line? Kevin Piunno: 11:53 So I did my Undergrad in plant science, and I definitely going into it did not even know what tissue culture was. James Nicholson: 12:00 Same here. Kevin Piunno: 12:01 Yeah. So when I started working for my prof in my second year and I was introduced to it, I was like, "Oh, this is really ... This is really weird." James Nicholson: 12:09 No, it really is. It's the same sort of similar thing with me. I did my degree at Guelph here in plant science Undergrad and had no clue what tissue culture is like. I'm sure maybe you've guys heard of it before. I know like you've had a little bit experience, but it's very sort of niche thing. So at the university here, there's a course, Plant Tissue Culture that both me and Kevin took, and that sort of sparked my interest in it. Jordan Terpstra: 12:34 So James, who are you working with? Who is your faculty or your supervisor? James Nicholson: 12:38 My advisor's Dr. Praveen Saxena. Kevin Piunno: 12:40 My advisor is Dr Max Jones and I'm co-advised by Praveen Saxena and Youbin Zheng. Josh Moran: 12:46 Traditionally where are hazelnuts coming from? James Nicholson: 12:48 So traditionally, so the biggest producer of hazelnuts is Turkey, and 70% of them, the production comes from there. And the next top producers, Italy, about 14%, and then the US produces about 4%. However, what happened was in 2014 Turkey experienced a horrible growing season. A late frost destroyed the hazelnut crop. So this cost, because they have 70% of the world's production and now the supply's completely decreased, the price per ton of hazelnut shot way up. So that's sort of the issue with hazelnuts, is they rely on one region for growing. So what they want to do is they want to move the industry from say dominant in Turkey to the United States and North American Canada. Josh Moran: 13:41 Expensive Nutella would be bad news bearers. For some people. Not for myself personally with my plethora of allergies, but. James Nicholson: 13:50 So what happened was because of the spike in prices, companies such as Ferrero Rocher making Nutella, Nesel ... Nestle, sorry, and [inaudible 00:14:00] who use the hazelnut products, it just cost them way more. So now as a result, the consumer has to now pay more for Nutella, which everyone loves. So everyone was sort of hurt by this. Josh Moran: 14:12 So since 2014 you said, have you, has there been an increase in hazelnut growth in North America? James Nicholson: 14:20 The issue ... Traditionally, what's been wrong with why they can't grow hazelnuts in North America is primarily this one disease called Eastern Filbert Blight. It's a fungus. Since 2014 they've been trying to breed new varieties that are resistant to Eastern Filbert Blight, which causes like big cankers to form on the trees and then causes branches to die, and then that will affect the yield. Yeah, so they want to expand the industry in North America and they've actually now hybridized with a native hazelnut variety. It's called Corylus americana. So they hybridized it with the European hazelnut. And that's sort of how they're trying to reintroduce hazelnuts or no, sorry, introduce hazelnuts into North America. Kevin Piunno: 15:11 Not just for hazelnut, but for any kind of new crop that you want to introduce. People spent years breeding a crop that'll finally work in this environment. But now you've got like one, maybe 10 trees that take a long time to reach maturity. So how do you take that like one to 10 trees and turn it into 40 million in the shortest time possible? And tissue culture is the right method for them. James Nicholson: 15:38 Yeah. So that's a perfect transition to explain. So that's how, why we're doing tissue culture with hazelnuts because now they have these new hybrid varieties and we need now millions of them to plant across Ontario and across the United States. So it's an effective method to do that. Josh Moran: 15:55 So the crossing is in between this American variety and the European variety? James Nicholson: 15:59 Yep. Josh Moran: 15:59 So is this just overall better in terms of cold hardiness and then also hazelnut size as well then across the board? So it's just better in terms of production? James Nicholson: 16:06 Exactly. Yep. So by crossing it with the North American hazelnut and the European one, it allowed it to be more cold hardy. So it's able to survive better in North America. As well as the native one has resistance to this horrible fungus, Eastern Filbert Blight. Josh Moran: 16:22 So what is the process to get these prepared? How are you preparing these hazelnuts? Kevin Piunno: 16:27 We start with a bunch of shoots and culture and we'll keep chopping those shoots in half or in three. It's a exponential process. So when we have a certain amount, maybe we have 2000 that are manageable, we'll induce roots in them and then those will be put out into the greenhouse. And then from there they're just growing as a normal tree. And then they can move to a bigger greenhouse or somewhere else or maybe even go right into the field. If you want them out in the field somewhere, you start with shoots, then you make roots, then you have to harden them off in the greenhouse. You get them used to outside conditions a little bit, and then you can put them outside. Josh Moran: 17:06 Some of your work specifically is in developing an easier way to run through this process. Correct? Kevin Piunno: 17:12 Yep. Josh Moran: 17:12 So, and James has used some of your equipment as well I'd assume or? Kevin Piunno: 17:17 Yes. James Nicholson: 17:17 Yep. So just to sort of tie in what my project relates to Kevin, is Kevin designed these new vessel boxes. It's just a plastic rectangular box that you put the plants into. And then of course it's completely sterilized. And that's where I grew up with my hazelnuts in these boxes. What we do is with these boxes, we have it on this sort of rocking system where it rocks back liquid media, so that nutrient solution, back and forth to grow the hazelnuts. And it works really well. James Nicholson: 17:52 My project was figuring out that actually the plants actually root better in this rocking system. It's called the temporary immersion system. So it temporary dips it into the ... the plants into a liquid media and then removes it. And why you do this is so that the plants have a better interaction with the nutrients and the hormones where traditional methods you use sort of a gel as I mentioned before, but we're sort of now using a liquid. And then it dips it in and then the box sort of rocks away and it removes the plants completely from the media. And this allows for gas exchange of oxygen and CO2. We found out this helps root the hazelnuts better. However, these rockers, what's the cost per space on them right now? Kevin Piunno: 18:36 Yeah, so some of the big commercial rocking units, they're like a whole bookshelf size thing and each shelf rocks back and forth, and they're like $12,000, and they hold like a hundred boxes. So to scale it up big is just pretty expensive. I've come up with a teeny tiny version where the cost per box that you're putting on is about 25% of the big units. I've actually started to spin off companies selling these things and other hardware and they're almost all focused on liquid culture because liquid culture is better, but you need some kind of support system to go with it. You can't just plop the plants in. They'll basically drown. Josh Moran: 19:17 Okay. Kevin, I'm curious, it seems like you are doing a lot of work with more the equipment side of things. Are you working specifically with a certain plant or anything or is it more just the equipment? Kevin Piunno: 19:28 In my Master's studies, I'm focused on the hardware, and to kind of validate it I've used a couple of different plants. Artemesia is one. I've used some woody species like apple and I've also used some weirder ones like drosera which is a sundew. It's a carnivorous plant. I've kind of just like sprinkled in a bunch of different plants, just to make sure it's working with a variety of different species. Josh Moran: 19:54 Have you noticed one that would work, one or two works better than another set or so? Do you find anything like that? Kevin Piunno: 20:02 The sundews are kind of swampy plants, so kind of no matter what you do, they really like the liquid no matter what. But the idea with my system is that it's adjustable so you can adjust the amount of liquid versus air that they're getting. So it can be tuned to any species. Jordan Terpstra: 20:21 Well, and how's this sort of a step up from a traditional system? I know you mentioned having it in liquid media and having it move is beneficial. But is there any other things that make it really stand out? Kevin Piunno: 20:29 The thing that makes it stand out is that it's modular, so you can use the box with the normal gelled media or you can use it with the liquid media systems. Jordan Terpstra: 20:37 Okay, cool. Kevin Piunno: 20:38 Or that traditionally you're either using a really plain box or a Petri plate or something with gel or you're using some big, crazy, complicated expensive system. James Nicholson: 20:50 So how me and Kevin's research goes hand in hand is mass produce in these hazelnuts. And I found out that they multiply with the hormones using this rocker system and as well root using the rocker system. However, I'm using the one that each spot costs $120, and I want to make this commercially feasible, this method I've developed through my Master's. Kevin, you said dropped it by a third the price ... Kevin Piunno: 21:12 A quarter. James Nicholson: 21:13 A quarter. Kevin Piunno: 21:13 Dropped it by three quarters. James Nicholson: 21:15 Which is huge. So and his research, I would ideally like to use the micro rocker system that he developed for production of the hazelnuts if you brought this to a commercial scale. Jordan Terpstra: 21:27 Very cool. So did you guys do research in your Undergrad? Kevin Piunno: 21:30 Yeah, yeah. I actually started working for Dr. Jones after my second year of Undergrad as a summer research assistant. So I was introduced to tissue culture there. I also did a lot of 3D printing that summer. That's how we started developing all the tools that we're working with now. And then I did a fourth year research project, which was on controlling humidity inside of the containers. Josh Moran: 21:53 Very cool. So it's been a process building up to where you are now really. Kevin Piunno: 21:56 Yeah. Yeah. Like where the hardware is at now is kind of been like five years of R&D. Josh Moran: 22:02 And do you enjoy the research? Kevin Piunno: 22:03 Yeah. I had never seen a 3D printer when I started working in my second year. I have two in my house now. Josh Moran: 22:10 That's sick. How about you James? Did you do research in your undergrad? James Nicholson: 22:13 So his story is a little bit more interesting than mine. He's been developing, using the 3D printers and whatnot. I just sort of volunteered in this lab and then I ended up getting taken on as a technician in the GRIPP Lab with Dr. Jones. From there I just learned all the know-hows of tissue culture, like how it works or how to make media and whatnot. So that's how I got my start in tissue culture. Josh Moran: 22:39 So do you guys think ... I guess I should ask first. Whereabouts are you in your masters? Kevin Piunno: 22:45 I am writing right now. So I'll be done any, any day now. Josh Moran: 22:49 Yeah? How about yourself? James Nicholson: 22:51 I'm in them, yep, same ... Josh Moran: 22:52 Same kind of ... James Nicholson: 22:52 Dreadful writing stage. It's not that bad, but it's a long process and it takes a lot of time. Josh Moran: 22:56 Yeah. So what's your guys' plans afterwards? Kevin Piunno: 23:02 For me, I've done a spinoff company selling this hardware, which has actually kind of been distracting me from writing for the last couple months. But when I'm done my thesis, I'll be doing that full time. Josh Moran: 23:14 Very cool. Jordan Terpstra: 23:14 We wish you good luck for sure. How about you James? What are your plans? James Nicholson: 23:18 Hopefully Kevin will hire me at We Vitro, pay me a hundred thousand a year ideally, but I don't think that'll happen immediately, but ... Kevin Piunno: 23:25 I'll have to pay myself first. James Nicholson: 23:29 My exact plan is not certain, but right now with tissue culture, there's a lot of, I don't know, various jobs out there, especially in the cannabis industry. Yeah, they're looking for a lot of people to do tissue culture, work with that, to mass produce certain varieties that they want. And also because tissue culture gives disease free material. So there's a lot of job aspects in that area right now. Josh Moran: 23:57 Well, and since you're sort of reaching the end of your Master's, you've definitely, you guys have both definitely put all the legwork. And I'm just curious as to what was the most challenging aspect of your work? Kevin Piunno: 24:07 I think it's you have these grand designs for an experiment and you get doing it and you're partway through, you've already been working on it for two weeks and you realized you've missed something important. And maybe you can just let it go, or you have to go back and redo the whole thing. So just that kind of self-directed research you learn a lot by trial and error and just making mistakes. Jordan Terpstra: 24:30 Perseverance. Kevin Piunno: 24:31 Yeah. James Nicholson: 24:31 Yeah. And that's happened to me as well. You set up this huge experiment and then one small thing especially with tissues who get contaminated with the bacteria and then you have to throw it out and start over. Yeah, that's extremely frustrating and time consuming. Josh Moran: 24:46 I'm curious, how long has research with tissue culture been going on? Is this a newer research field? Has it been going on for years? Kevin Piunno: 24:54 It's been going on for like a hundred years when the first experiments were done, but that's probably been most prevalent like the last 40 years. But the reason my company is looking into hardware is because a lot of people are still using an Erlenmeyer flask and just shaking the culture, which is just, it's not the right tool for the job. But people have been doing it for so long and just using standard protocols that nobody's really thought that much into how we're doing it. Josh Moran: 25:24 And then do you think that this technology could kind of ... do you think it probably has the potential to sort of revolutionize the way that we grow some of these plants, well, specifically hazelnuts as well. It's kind of amazing to think that someplace that like Canada and North America, which wasn't prevalent in terms of growing hazelnuts has the potential now to grow on such a large scale if things keep heading in this direction, which is pretty amazing. Kevin Piunno: 25:46 So it seems like a new tech, but you've already used it all the time without knowing it. Pretty much all bananas are done with tissue culture. Bananas naturally have seeds. We eat a triploid banana that doesn't have seeds. Banana trees are not actually trees. They're herbs, so they don't make branches. So you can't take cuttings either. They'll make little shoots coming out of the bottom of the tree, but it takes a long time. So if you want to plant a new banana field, it would take you years to do it. So pretty much all bananas are done with tissue culture. Orchids are the same way. There's a lot of horticultural crops. So it's kind of in the background. It's always there, but it's not very public facing. Josh Moran: 26:28 James, you mentioned that, again, with the potential for hazelnuts to be grown in North America, you mentioned the cannabis industry that they could be using this technology. I guess I'm actually asking both of you guys for a potential student that might be interested in plant science, any words of wisdom? Kevin Piunno: 26:47 I'll just say that seven out of the last seven people to graduate our lab are all working for cannabis companies right now. James Nicholson: 26:54 Yup. And I've had ones reached out to me already too. So yeah, the industry is exploding right now. So if that's your interest, working in cannabis, yeah, I'd go for- Kevin Piunno: 27:05 It's a very niche field. There's not a lot of competition for jobs in tissue culture, so it's a pretty nice thing to be an expert at. There's a huge lack of workers in tissue culture. So the demand is like way higher than the actual supply for tissue culture workers right now. That won't last forever though once those positions get filled. Josh Moran: 27:26 You guys had kind of mentioned that you guys were plant nerds. So growing up I'm curious, were you guys interested in plants? Was that something that you guys are passionate about or did you develop that later on? James Nicholson: 27:38 To be honest, I had ... didn't have any interest in plants when I was younger. It wasn't sort of my thing I guess. But then once I came to the university of Guelph, I actually started in general biology and then I took a bunch of the botany courses and I'm like, "Wow, this is actually some pretty cool stuff." And eventually then I switched into plant science, my degree in plant science, and then focused pretty much all my biology courses, and Guelph has a lot of them. There was a great variety of plant courses and then that's where I found my love for plant science. What about yourself? Kevin Piunno: 28:08 Yeah. It wasn't like a childhood love for plants or anything. I didn't grow up on a farm. But I think, I knew I wanted to go into bio, but I was kind of torn between plants and animals, and as I was looking into it, just the weird variety of what plants do, just such strange ones that kind of defy logic and that's kind of what got me interested in plants. Josh Moran: 28:34 What would you say has been your favorite plant to work with thus far that you've gotten the opportunity to work with through the university? Kevin Piunno: 28:41 I really liked the carnivorous plants. James Nicholson: 28:43 I'd say hazelnuts but ... Josh Moran: 28:44 Yeah. James Nicholson: 28:45 I'm biased you know. Josh Moran: 28:45 That's a good one. Yeah. No, right on. And you said the variety as an undergraduate was something that really stood out to you. What was your favorite class as an undergraduate student? James Nicholson: 28:56 So again, bias was the Plant Tissue Culture course because that's what sort of brought me into what I'm doing with my project. But I know Guelph has a lot of, like there's a lot of plant science courses, but specifically there's a section of botany courses. I took all the, like the growth and development botany course, the plant metabolism ones. And those are the ones sort of I really enjoyed. Kevin Piunno: 29:18 Life Strategies of Plants was really interesting. You get to see like just all the weird adaptations they've done to survive because like animals can survive through behavior mechanisms, moving from one place to another. But plants are, they're stuck so they have to defend themselves chemically and physically. Josh Moran: 29:37 So it looks like we're running low on time here guys. So I'll ask you, do you guys have shout outs you want to make? Kevin Piunno: 29:43 So if you do tissue culture and you're interested in trying out my stuff, we can be found at wevitro.com. Josh Moran: 29:52 Any promo codes? Kevin Piunno: 29:54 Oh sure. I'll make one. So use OAC10. You'll get 10% off. Josh Moran: 29:59 Sweet. And ... James Nicholson: 30:00 Yeah, just a shout out to just of the University of Guelph. They've brought us with these great opportunities to do these fantastic projects. So yeah, thank you to them. Jordan Terpstra: 30:08 Cool. So we want to thank you guys for joining us today, and good luck with writing. I definitely don't envy you. Have a good time. Kevin Piunno: 30:15 Thanks. James Nicholson: 30:16 And you. Josh Moran: 30:16 Thanks guys. Till next time. Josh Moran: 30:21 The Why and How podcast is published by the Ontario Agricultural College of the University of Guelph. And it's produced by Stephanie Craig and Jordan Terpstra. Recording and editing done by Jacob Isaac and Kyle Richie. The host is me, Josh Moran. Funding for this episode was provided by the WS Young Memorial Communications Grant through the OAC Alumni Foundation.