Nicole Berardi: 00:06 Plants will use red light over far red light, and that's for photosynthesis. They just use the red light preferentially. They can use the far red light, but red light is just much better. So they reflect any of that far red light away and towards other vegetation. Josh Moran: 00:27 You're listening to the Why & 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: 00:45 Hello everyone, I'm Josh Moran, and today we're joined by friend of the show, Jordan Terpstra. Thanks for being on again, Jordan. Jordan Terpstra: 00:51 Hey Josh. My pleasure. I must be doing something right because you keep asking me to come back. Josh Moran: 00:55 It's the charm. It's your charm. Jordan Terpstra: 00:56 It's the charm? Good to know. Josh Moran: 00:57 So today we are joined by a PhD student, Nicole Berardi. How are you today? Nicole Berardi: 01:04 I'm good. How are you? Thank you for having me. Josh Moran: 01:04 Thanks for being on. I'm really excited about today's topic. And speaking of that, could you give us maybe a Cole's Notes version of what we're going to be talking about today? Nicole Berardi: 01:12 Yeah. So essentially what we'll be talking about is plant interactions and how they communicate outside of competition for resources. Josh Moran: 01:21 Sounds great. I'm excited to get into it. But before we do, I'm going to ask you a few questions about yourself, if that's okay. Nicole Berardi: 01:26 Okay. Josh Moran: 01:27 All right, So maybe to start us off, what did you study as an undergraduate? Nicole Berardi: 01:31 In undergrad I was at the University of Guelph as well and I was in animal bio. Then I went into animal nutrition for my masters and then I switched over to plants for my PhD. Josh Moran: 01:43 Okay. So you went from animal bio sciences to plant agriculture. What caused you to make that shift? Nicole Berardi: 01:50 When I was finishing up my master's degree, I was looking into other options. I was applying to jobs, but I was also interested in doing a PhD. My advisor at the time sort of brought this opportunity to me and told me to meet with Clarence Swanton, who is my advisor in plant agriculture, because he had a PhD opportunity. Both advisors, they saw that there was a great benefit in having a background in both plant agriculture and animal agriculture. Once I talked a little bit more to Clarence, I saw that it was a great opportunity and I decided that it was a good fit for me and it has been so far, so I've really enjoyed it. Josh Moran: 02:31 Good, good. Clarence is a great guy. We had him for some of my second year courses, well, for one of my second year courses, rather. He was always super interesting and engaging as a professor, so that's good. Jordan Terpstra: 02:42 And I actually had Clarence in my second year course and I'm pretty sure what we're talking about today, he introduced to us in that course and it was a really cool topic. So I'm excited to be here today as well. Josh Moran: 02:53 Speaking on your research, what stage are you in right now and what do you, what are you looking at maybe, too, a bit more? Nicole Berardi: 03:00 Yeah, so I'm working with Arabidopsis. I'm in my third year of my PhD, so I'm pretty heavy into the research side of things. Right now we're finishing up a lot of the physiology work that I'm doing in Arabidopsis around the competition for light quality. I look at things on a molecular level for the most part. I'm looking at levels of things like antioxidants and stress responses and things like that. Once I finish the Arabidopsis stuff, I'm going to be doing some work in mutants as well as with corn. Josh Moran: 03:41 Okay. And you said Arabidopsis, so why would you use an Arabidopsis? I'm sure that that's not, it doesn't hop out as like a corn or a soybean, which is a typical agrinomic crop. Why are you using this as- Nicole Berardi: 03:52 Yeah, so Arabidopsis is a model species. So there's a lot of work that's done in fruit flies as an animal model and it's the same thing. But for plants it's just, people don't know it as much because we don't learn about it as much in undergrad I find, or maybe that's because I was in an bio, but still. So the reason we use it is because we have the whole genome of it and there's a lot of genetic material in Arabidopsis. So we have different mutant lines that are available to us and that can help you with your research and focus in on your research. For example, for me, I'm looking at antioxidant responses and stress responses to weed competition. I have access to a whole bunch of mutants that can help us understand how, what we're looking at. For us, it's antioxidants, so we have antioxidant mutants. It can help us hone in on that specific antioxidant and how it works within that response or what it's role is in that response. Josh Moran: 05:02 Okay. And what are some of these roles that you see antioxidants actually partaking in? Nicole Berardi: 05:06 Yeah. What antioxidants do is they scavenge reactive oxygen species. What that is, they're compounds that are derived from oxygen, but they become very reactive and they can cause damage to lipids, proteins, DNA, things like that, and overall caused the plant damage when they're in levels that are in excess. What antioxidants do is they take those compounds and they convert them to things that are harmless to the plant. For example, hydrogen peroxide would be one of those types of compounds, those reactive oxygen species, and it gets converted to water, which is obviously not harmful to the plant. So by looking at specific antioxidants, we can see which antioxidants play the biggest role in this form of stress, and we're also looking at what kind of reactive oxygen species play the biggest role in this kind of stress. Jordan Terpstra: 06:04 I'm going to take a step back. So Arabidopsis, so you said it is this plant that's used for research because there's lots of genetic material and lots known about it. But what type of plant is it? Is it a big plant, a small plant? Does it have a relative that we know? Nicole Berardi: 06:18 It's really small. It's of the mustard family but it, so it grows in a rosette, so it's sort of flat and leafy. And it'll be maybe like ten centimeters in diameter. That's a rough estimate, but it's not very big. Part of the reason you use it as well is because it goes through it's full life cycle very quickly. From seed to when it bolts, so when it starts growing a stem with flowers, so it's becoming reproductive at that point, is about four weeks. It goes through it's full life cycle, so all the way to seed set at, about six to eight weeks. So it's much faster than using something like corn where you'd have to wait a full summer. The normal growing season would be from May to September in the field. So it's just a lot faster. Jordan Terpstra: 07:14 Very cool. And you were mentioning these mutants. I'm assuming we're not talking about X men here. What do you mean by mutants? Nicole Berardi: 07:22 I didn't think about it that way. Because we know the whole genome for Arabidopsis, they can pinpoint certain areas in that genetic code that encode an antioxidant. I'm going to use ascorbate as an example, which is vitamin C. They know how ascorbate is produced or what genes regulate the production of ascorbate. So you can knock out those genes and then you have a plant that is really low or deficient in ascorbate. So from the lack of ascorbate, it tells you a lot about what ascorbate's role actually is in the plant. That's what I mean by mutants, is it's for a specific... They've been able to remove the code or upregulate that area of the genetic sequence in order to increase- Josh Moran: 08:10 So it puts emphasis on the role of the actual section being taken out, correct? Nicole Berardi: 08:15 Exactly. Yeah. Josh Moran: 08:16 And to tie it back, I'm kind of curious about this idea as to how plants are actually communicating. What's happening there in terms of- Nicole Berardi: 08:24 Essentially how it works is we have the full spectrum of light coming down from the sun. It should have plenty of all of the different wavelengths of light, right? It comes down and any unused light will be reflected away from the plant. That's why we see plants as green, right? Because they don't absorb green light, so we see them as green. But they'll also reflect away any excess of the other wavelengths of light that they receive. Nicole Berardi: 08:52 For example, plants will use red light over far red light, and that's for photosynthesis. They just use the red light preferentially. They can use the far red light, but red light is just much better. So they reflect any of that far red light away and towards other vegetation. What this does, it creates an increase in the proportion of far red light, a decrease in red light. There's a pigment within plants called phytochrome that can detect changes in this red to far red ratio. So if there's a higher proportion of the far red light being reflected towards a plant, it'll decrease the red to far red ratio. The plant will recognize that through phytochrome, and then it elicits a bunch of physiological responses within the plant. Josh Moran: 09:44 So basically it comes down to it not being the proper, well, the right quality of light to help actually grow these plants, correct? Is that the idea? Nicole Berardi: 09:55 Sort of. They do grow differently based on that change in light. They'll still grow, but they sort of re partition their resources. It's characterized by a lot of elongation growth, so they won't grow in the same way. They're often taller, more upright because of this change in light environment. It's essentially like they're being shaded without actually being shaded. So if you see a plant that's been shaded and they are growing and sort of elongating, it's the same response, just they're not being shaded yet. It's all being reflected horizontally off of the plant. Josh Moran: 10:35 It's almost like it's fighting to extend it's top end so it can uptake more light, basically, or this higher quality of life. Nicole Berardi: 10:42 Exactly. That whole principle is essentially what we think is part of the reason that early season weed competition can cause yield losses all the way at the end at harvest, is because off the bat when they're really tiny, they use, or sorry, they lose some yield potential because their growth pattern, their growth and development is changed from that early stage. So even if the weeds are removed and they're no longer under that same stress and their growth isn't changed any longer, they lost some yield potential early in the season because of that change in light environment. Josh Moran: 11:24 Okay, so they're concentrating resources towards the elongation, opposed to setting that path up where they can experience greater yields, correct? Nicole Berardi: 11:32 Exactly. Not only that, it will change their growth and development. But like I said, on the physiological responses side of things, it also changes the concentration of reactive oxygen species, antioxidant levels. Within the plant, there's just all of this stress response that changes the plant that we can't physically see, whereas as we can physically see the changes in growth. Josh Moran: 12:00 Okay. I'm just curious about the role that reactive oxidative species actually have inside the plant, to be a little more specific. What is it doing to cause this elongation, or what's happening? Nicole Berardi: 12:11 Before I answer that question, I want to talk what reactive oxygen species sort of do in general. They're in all of us. They're in plants, they're in animals and they're good. But when they're in excess, they're bad. Their normal role in plants is as signaling molecules. So they're kept at certain levels, sort of in a balance with antioxidants, and their normal roles include things like programmed cell death. So the turnover of cells, essentially. That's important because if you don't have programmed cell death, that can lead to cancer and- Josh Moran: 12:55 Just an excess amount of cells, I suppose. Nicole Berardi: 12:58 Exactly, yeah. So it's very important. That's not their only role, but they do things like that. So they are good, but when stress is imposed, they can increase in levels that are past a certain threshold and they result in damage. So I wouldn't say that reactive oxygen species are what's causing the changes in growth. That's just one of the things that results from this change in light environment. And there hasn't completely been a link on a mechanism, like we don't know the mechanism that causes those changes in growth. We know that phytochrome isn't activated. An activation of phytochrome then elicits a variety of responses, one of which are those changes in growth. Josh Moran: 13:49 Okay, such as elongation. Got you. So it really is kind of like this disruption of this balance within the system, like a disruption of homeostasis, right? It just means that with that imbalance, that's when you start to see these negative effects come along, correct? Nicole Berardi: 14:04 Exactly. It's like any other stress, or any other competition, really, just the responses are different and the form of competition is different. Josh Moran: 14:16 Okay. And you talk about these antioxidant defense mechanisms. So that's sort of what defends against this excess of reactive oxidative species? Is that what's sort of going on there? Nicole Berardi: 14:29 Yeah. The way to think about that is there's an equilibrium between reactive oxygen species production and scavenging by antioxidants. Antioxidants keep the reactive oxygen species at a level in which they don't cause damage, but they can still perform their physiological function, whatever that may be. Jordan Terpstra: 14:53 I want to actually go back to, so you were talking about the rays of light. It's been a long time since I've learned about light. You were saying that there's far red lights and then there's just red light. What would be the difference between a far red light and just regular red light? Nicole Berardi: 15:08 Yeah, so if you're looking at the spectrum of light that we can see, so the visible spectrum, on the right end, you would see red light. Then just before we get to the infrared region, there's far red light. If we're looking at it in terms of nanometers, red light would occur at about 670 nanometers, and far red light occurs at about 730 nanometers. It's very close and it's just at the edge of the visible spectrum. Josh Moran: 15:42 Okay. And would far red light play a greater role in maybe a different stage of plan growth opposed to this initial growth? Or is it pretty much just an unideal across the board? Nicole Berardi: 15:55 That's a great question. I think it would really depend on how much the ratio is able to change. I think it's harder to have a great effect on the red to far red ratio when the plant is bigger, unless there's a weed that's equally as big. Especially because once the canopy starts to form, you don't really have the same light reflected that way. I think it is a bigger thing in early season weed competition, however, a change in the ratio that does inactivate phytochrome would have a physiological response at any growth stage. I just think that it would be harder to alter that red to far red ratio when the plants are bigger. Josh Moran: 16:43 You said earlier on with the reflection of light, I'm just kind of curious about this. You said that weeds are basically intercepting light that's reflecting off of the target plant that you want to grow, that has an actual implication, an agronomic implication. Now, how is it doing it? I'm kind of confused about that, if you could maybe just touch on that a little bit more. Nicole Berardi: 17:05 How the light is being reflected? Josh Moran: 17:07 Yeah. And and why that has a negative implication. Because it's still taking in a lot of light, but how is it not getting a sufficient amount of quality light from that standpoint? Nicole Berardi: 17:18 Yeah. It is a little bit confusing, but essentially the way it works is yes, the plant is still, if it's not being shaded, it's still receiving the full spectrum of light from the sun. But another plant in the same region reflecting light towards it that isn't in the full proportion of the spectrum, it's going to increase the proportion of far red light. So it's reflecting the far red light away from it and towards the crop plant. That's why it's not about light quantity, it's about the quality. And the quality changes because there's a higher proportion of far red light and the plant recognizes changes in a red to far red ratio. Josh Moran: 18:07 I get it. I get it, I get it. So basically, maybe I'm wrong here, but what happens is, is that the weeds that are around it are going to take up a lot of this high quality red light, and they don't want that far red light. As a result, those weeds are actually reflecting that far red light. So as the far red light hits these other plants that are trying to take in more red light, what basically happens is, is that there's an uneven proportion of far red to red light. So there's a greater amount of far red light. Okay, that makes sense now. Okay, cool. Nicole Berardi: 18:36 Yes. Basically, if we're talking more technically, in our treatments and the research that we do, weed free would have a red to far red ratio of about 1.8, whereas our far red enriched treatment or our low red to far red would have a ratio of about 0.3. Josh Moran: 18:57 Okay. Okay. Cool. Since you're working with such specific waves of light, are you working within a controlled environment? How are you actually conducting your research? Nicole Berardi: 19:09 Yeah. We grow all our plants in controlled environment growth chambers. Basically everything else is kept constant. So that way we can just isolate for changes in light quality. The way we do this is, in our weedy treatment, we're using just commercial grass as our weed, and that's because it provides a nice uniform stand around the plant. So it's in a ring and the root system is isolated from the root system of the plant that we're studying. Josh Moran: 19:43 And that's to put emphasis on not having this competition for resources within the soil, correct? Nicole Berardi: 19:48 Exactly. We also keep the grass at a height so that there's no shading. It's all just horizontal reflection of that far red light that causes these changes. Josh Moran: 20:01 Okay. Are there certain weeds in an agronomic setting that would be, say, worse than others? Or would it just be one that has the largest canopy basically, would probably have the greatest implication? Nicole Berardi: 20:14 Yeah. I don't know if we know if there's any that are better or worse at reflecting the light, but that would make the most sense, is if they're bigger, better at competing, they're probably going to be better at reflecting any of the far red light away from them. Josh Moran: 20:32 It's super interesting, the kind of idea that plants do communicate, and it makes sense that they communicate through how they react to light coming off of another plant. I find that super duper interesting, and actually relatively surprising. Is there anything that's really surprised so far with the research that you've been conducting? Nicole Berardi: 20:49 I think the biggest thing is how quickly it can happen. With Arabidopsis, I grow it for three weeks in normal conditions, so no competition for anything, and then I have it in it's treatment for one week. Within one day of it being in that treatment, I see changes in it's growth. Jordan Terpstra: 21:12 One day, really? Josh Moran: 21:12 That's crazy, yeah. Nicole Berardi: 21:14 So the rosette of Arabidopsis, it's very flat and just bushy, but when it's in its treatment for a day, the leaves will just raise up. So they aren't extending much at that point, but they raise up. And it's very obvious. It's very obvious. It's really cool. Josh Moran: 21:34 I remember calling back to some of my gained knowledge from second year at university, I guess it would have been second year, yeah. What happened was, I remember Clarence would show us this growth curve for corn and he would show- Nicole Berardi: 21:48 I know exactly the one you're talking about. Josh Moran: 21:48 Yeah, where at the very beginning is where it's most susceptible to yield loss, right? And that's because when corn hits a certain stage, you almost no longer have to worry about these weeds because the difference in size means that this far red light is not reflecting off these weeds onto these corn plants, which means that there isn't that disproportion, right? Nicole Berardi: 22:10 Yeah. What that's showing is the critical period for weed control. In corn, it's from about the fourth leaf tip stage, third or fourth leaf tip stage. I can't remember when it ends, it's either the eighth or 12th leaf tip stage. Outside of that period, weeds will not have as much of an impact. It'll essentially be negligible outside of those points. Josh Moran: 22:38 So there's a lot of importance for farmers to be selectively treating their fields early on, right? And that's the reason why people spray a lot of these herbicides, so these chemicals that kill weeds as well as till in some situations, which is plowing and turning over the ground, right? So it kind of puts emphasis on how important that is for the early stages of plant growth and development, correct? Nicole Berardi: 23:06 Exactly. Jordan Terpstra: 23:07 Josh is bringing up more like corn and agriculture, but what type of implications will your research have for the general public? Or is it going to be more for producers and things like that? Nicole Berardi: 23:20 It will be more for producers, but I would say primarily it's more for researchers at this point. We're basically providing building blocks that can be used for producers later on. Essentially the ultimate goal that we hope comes out of our research is by finding out more about how light quality can impact a crop and how antioxidants have a role in how ROS have a role. Josh Moran: 23:51 ROS being reactive oxidative species, right? Okay. Nicole Berardi: 23:54 Yes, exactly. From that, we hope that we can provide some sort of target to a breeding program so that they can breed for a more stress tolerant crop. Josh Moran: 24:02 Okay. I always love going home and seeing my parents' huge garden that they have. Now, does this kind of put an emphasis on the importance of weed control in your own garden as well? Would that have implications on, say, other plants? Do you think it could possibly? Nicole Berardi: 24:17 I think it could for sure. In a garden you obviously don't want to have too many weeds because, especially in field conditions or in garden conditions, there will also be direct competition for resources. For both of those reasons, you don't want to have weeds. But in a garden you also would want to make sure that there is enough space, that you're removing weeds, because even if you don't think they're competing for nutrients yet, there may be competition for that light quality. Because it's something that happens in all plants that show a shade avoidance response. Some are shade tolerant, but a lot of plants are not shade tolerant. Any plant that isn't shade tolerant can have these changes happen to it if they are given an increase in far red light. Josh Moran: 25:13 So it will adapt in whatever way possible to try and see... It's kind of interesting, right? When you think of humans and animals, if we need to adapt to something, we can evade our environment. But as a plant, you need to adapt your environment. So when you talk about these, you said shade avoidant, plants that can't handle that, so what they'll do is, is basically adapt in whatever way they can do ensure that they survive, correct? Nicole Berardi: 25:37 Yeah. I find that succulents are a good example of that. If a succulent isn't getting enough light, they really grow differently. I think that's something that a lot of people have probably experienced, because it's very obvious. If they're in slight shade or not full sun, they grow very differently. Josh Moran: 25:59 You work with the Arabidopsis, corn, and soybeans, correct? Nicole Berardi: 26:03 I don't personally work with soybeans- Josh Moran: 26:04 No. Okay. Nicole Berardi: 26:05 But there's a lot of research that's been done in my lab on soybeans, so I do know about that as well. So it's part of our research program, just not my project. Josh Moran: 26:12 Okay. Well maybe you could speak on this a little bit. Is there a difference in the way that a soybean would react in comparison to a corn plant, in comparison to the actual Arabidopsis you think? Nicole Berardi: 26:24 Generally the morphological, or the changes in growth, those responses are pretty similar. It's all typically elongation growth because the plants themselves are different. They look different, they grow different, they grow different from each other. But it's all characterized by increased elongation. In terms of the actual physiological responses, so what we're looking at on a molecular basis, they can be quite different. There's a lot of similarities across species, but there are some differences as well, which is to be expected because different antioxidants may play a bigger role in one species over another species. Josh Moran: 27:09 Okay, yeah. Well, they're completely different. They're completely different in terms of the way that they grow, if you look at a soybean versus a corn plant. So that would make sense. Yeah. Nicole Berardi: 27:17 Yeah. Jordan Terpstra: 27:19 I'm interested because, when I think of plants are just growing in the wild naturally, there's plant competition everywhere. You think of trees, and shrubs, and small plants, and weeds, and flowers. These responses are obviously a natural response and that they have to do in the wild. With your research, is it just so that we can eventually develop crops that will be more successful? Is that... Nicole Berardi: 27:46 Exactly, yeah. The main goal is to be able to provide the building blocks and just the information so that we can look into breeding more stress tolerant crops so that weed competition isn't as big of a factor during that critical period for weed control. They're a little bit more resistant to the weed that's in the vicinity of them, and therefore we don't get those yield losses in that critical period. Josh Moran: 28:14 With this background that is originally stemmed in animal biology and that sort of moved towards plants, I'm kind of curious as to what your background was before actually coming to the OAC. What drove you towards agriculture? Nicole Berardi: 28:26 Yeah. So I grew up in Brampton, which is not very heavy in agriculture. It's very city. I came to Guelph because I wanted to be a vet like so many people do. Josh Moran: 28:39 I did for a week. It wasn't for me. Nicole Berardi: 28:41 I did till about second or third year. Then I had been working at a vet clinic and I decided that wasn't for me and I was interested in research. So I did a fourth year undergraduate research course and just kind of got my feet wet, tried to see if I liked it, and I really did like it. That's how I decided that I wanted to go to grad school and that's sort of what's led me on the path. Josh Moran: 29:04 What do you think is the most rewarding part about your research? What are you looking to get out of what you're doing right now? Nicole Berardi: 29:10 Research can be frustrating. There's a lot of ups and downs in research. However, when you do lab work and it works out and you get results that you were hypothesizing would be your results, it's so rewarding. Josh Moran: 29:24 It's the big yes. Nicole Berardi: 29:24 Oh yeah, it's fantastic. Especially when it happens on a Friday afternoon. Jordan Terpstra: 29:28 Yeah. Lots of celebrating over the weekend, I'm sure. Josh Moran: 29:31 Don't lose sleep over the weekend. Yeah, yeah. Do you ever have moments where things really don't go the way that you want it to go, and how have you sort of adapted to those moments? Nicole Berardi: 29:39 Yeah, that happens. I think if you go into research, you have to expect that that's going to happen. I think people need to talk about that more because it's just the reality of it. For example, I was doing lab work that, so it was super oxide dismutase assay or SOD assay. Basically that's an antioxidant enzyme, and we were measuring the activity of it. We did a couple reps and it works no problem, or so we thought, and then suddenly it just stopped working. Josh Moran: 30:10 Oh, good. Nicole Berardi: 30:11 Yeah. So then you realize at that point that, okay, well there was obviously something that wasn't going right in the initial reps. It just appeared like it was fine. Then you have to basically just take your best guess and figure out what the issue is and go from there. It can be really frustrating because at that point you think you're almost done and you almost have that set of results, and then you're like, all right, I'm at ground zero. Josh Moran: 30:39 That's one of the most beautiful things about science I find and doing research, is that even sometimes a failure can be kind of thrown in as a success, right? Because now that you know, oh this doesn't work, it can kind of be turned around and you can look at it as, well now we know this doesn't work. So it's not necessarily always banging your head against the wall wondering what you did wrong. In reality, there's a silver lining, and it does provide a certain level of knowledge regardless. Nicole Berardi: 31:05 Yeah. And it definitely helps for if another assay goes wrong ,or just in general if something goes wrong, you learn, okay, this is the first step. This is most likely what the issue is. And then you can kind of weed things out as- Jordan Terpstra: 31:22 Pun intended? Nicole Berardi: 31:23 Yeah. I was going to say [crosstalk 00:31:25]. Josh Moran: 31:24 That's something that we see common amongst most of our guests. They talk about that need to be resilient. Would that probably be the biggest piece of advice you'd have for somebody that's interested in research but may be kind of fence sitting? Nicole Berardi: 31:38 On the topic of, yeah, being resilient and knowing that there's going to be those sorts of ups and downs, don't be afraid to ask questions. Ask whoever you can. Nobody's going to think it's a dumb question. Talk to your supervisor, talk to your peers. Somebody might have the answer for you already. But also bouncing those ideas off people might make you come to an idea that ends up being what works. Nicole Berardi: 32:05 The second is that if you start grad school, you're going to feel like you don't know what you're doing and like you should know what you're doing and you don't. That is completely normal and everybody that comes into the lab or any new grad student, they're always like, "I feel like I'm not, I'm supposed to be doing more than what I'm doing." That is totally normal. You'll read and then all of a sudden you'll, couple months later, you'll realize that you finally sort of know what you're doing and that it was just a normal- Josh Moran: 32:35 Learning curve. Nicole Berardi: 32:35 Learning curve, exactly. But you start out and you feel like, how did I get here? What am I doing? I don't know what I'm doing. Josh Moran: 32:41 Yeah, it's the same adjustment that you make from high school to university sort of in a way. You've got to really adapt to it. That's just what's going to come with due time, right? Nicole Berardi: 32:51 Exactly. Josh Moran: 32:52 I want to make sure I get this right for when I tell all my friends, because we kind of geek out about plants at times. Just to figure this out, we've got far red and red light, and you want them to come in at a certain proportion where you want that red light to be in a greater abundance than the far red, correct? Nicole Berardi: 33:10 Exactly, yeah. Josh Moran: 33:10 Basically what happens is when you have young corn, which is short and similar in size to these weeds, what happens is, is that they'll both uptake this far red and red light, correct.? At a certain proportion. But weeds will actually reflect a lot of this far red light, and as a result, maybe say the Arabidopsis or the corn or whatever you're working with will take in more of this far red light in proportion to the red light that they're taking it, right? Nicole Berardi: 33:40 Yep. Josh Moran: 33:41 And that will actually hinder the way that the corn grows and it will concentrate resources to things like elongation opposed to actually focusing on the important thing for farmers and gardeners, which is yield, correct? Nicole Berardi: 33:55 Yeah. Josh Moran: 33:55 So that's the gist of it? Nicole Berardi: 33:56 Yes, that's the gist. Josh Moran: 33:57 Sweet. Okay, I can't wait to share that. But with that being said, I would love to sit here and talk all day because I find this stuff super duper interesting, like all the topics we get to cover, but to leave it off, I was wondering if you had any shout outs you wanted to make? Is there anything exciting going on in the life of Nicole that you kind of want to let everyone know? Nicole Berardi: 34:16 Yeah, so obviously my advisor, Dr. Clarence Swanton, I feel like he took a chance on me coming from an animal background to do a PhD in plants, but I think he would say as well that it's worked out really well for both of us and I'm really enjoying it. Also, the postdoc in our lab, Dr. Sussan Amir [inaudible 00:34:36], he has been invaluable in helping me with the research, and he has made me feel like no question is a stupid question for sure and he just knows so much information. Then also to the people in the weeds lab. All of the students there are so fantastic and they really make the rollercoaster that is being in grad school really enjoyable. They're there for the ups, they're there for the downs, and it's fantastic to have a group like that. Josh Moran: 35:05 Well, I would agree with both you and what Dr. Swanton has to say. You're clearly a wealth of knowledge on- Josh Moran: 35:10 The Why & How Podcast is published by the Ontario Agricultural College of the University of Guelph. Josh Moran: 35:14 Can't wait to share this information, and- Josh Moran: 35:15 And it's produced by Stephanie Craig and Jordan Terpstra. Josh Moran: 35:18 Hopefully read more about it in the future. Josh Moran: 35:20 Recording and editing done by [crosstalk 00:35:20] Jacob [inaudible 00:35:22] and Kyle Richie. Your host is me, Josh Moran. Funding for this episode was provided by the W.S. Young Memorial Communications Grant through the OAC Alumni Foundation.