Akter wins Young Minds Award from ISHS

Nazmin Akter won the Young Minds Award from the International Society for Horticultural Science for her research on training tiny processing tomato plants to survive the rigors of transplanting.

Akter is a Ph.D. student with the horticulture and agronomy graduate group. She studies in the Controlled Environment Agriculture Lab in the Department of Plant Sciences, under the supervision of Laura Cammarisano, an assistant professor. She also works with Shamim Ahamed in the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering.

“The main excitement for this research is in understanding how we can prepare tomato seedlings to better tolerate environmental stress before transplanting, especially using a CEA system,” Akter said. Her presentation was titled, “Developing resilient tomato seedlings through pre-transplant chilling hardening in controlled environments.” 

California produces more than 90% of the processing tomatoes grown in the United States, and the state's production was worth nearly $1.2 billion in 2022, according to the state Department of Food and Agriculture. Usually, seedlings are started in a protected environment such as a greenhouse, then transplanted into a farm field. Smoothing that transition is critical for maintaining the plants’ productivity, especially during early spring planting when seedlings face cool temperatures. 

Akter’s research focuses on developing practical and sustainable strategies for preparing seedlings to withstand that stress so they can get established quickly in their new environment. That process is called “hardening.”

She aims to develop protocols that enhance seedling resilience to the cold, improve transplanting and increase tolerance to other environmental stressors. The protocols would also reduce the cost of heating greenhouses during the night.

She started by evaluating the effects of exposing tomato seedlings to night-time temperatures for 10 consecutive nights during the nursery stage. Her team measured the plants’ shape and size, chlorophyll content and fluorescence, membrane stability, stomatal conductance and root development.

Her early results showed that chilling the seedlings temporarily reduced the growth of new shoots and overall physiological performance, but the plants recovered after 10 days under optimal conditions. Seedlings exposed to moderate chilling developed longer roots during recovery and maintained a more compact canopy with fewer leaves, characteristics that may improve compatibility with automated transplanting systems and enhance their performance.

“I hope this work can help develop practical hardening strategies that produce more resilient seedlings, improve establishment after transplanting, and ultimately support the processing tomato production industry,” Akter said. 

Help from The Morning Star Co.

She won the best poster presentation at the ISHS' XVIII International Symposium on Processing Tomato, held in Monterey, Calif. She also received the Adopt-a-Scientist Travel Award, sponsored by The Morning Star Co. to attend the symposium.

The contents of Akter’s presentation will be published alongside other research presented during the symposium in a special edition of the association’s journal, Acta Horticulturae.

ISHS is a worldwide independent organization of horticulturists acting as a globally recognized platform for research, information exchange and collaboration in support of sustainable innovation in horticulture. The organization’s network has more than 70,000 individual members, libraries, governments, universities and other institutions.