John Ruter put 1,200 hibiscus seedlings in the ground and kept seven. The other 1,193 got bush hogged. He is the Armitage Professor of Horticulture at the University of Georgia and the director of the UGA Trial Gardens, and this week he walks Ping through everything that happens between a cross and a plant you can actually buy. It takes ten to fifteen years, and in his case it started with a phone call from a mountain research station.

The superintendent at Blairsville told him to come up and look at his hibiscus. When John got there the plants were covered in hibiscus sawfly, which runs four generations a year in Georgia. His answer came from a native species with hairy leaves. Under the microscope, Hibiscus grandiflorus looked like old shag carpet, and it had zero feeding damage. Moving that hairiness into his red-leaved selections cost him an F2 and a backcross and several years, and it produced the first hardy hibiscus ever released with sawfly resistance. Five of those plants became the Head Over Heels series.

There is a lot here beyond hibiscus. John explains why an Asian species and an American species usually will not make a fertile hybrid, using a dance-floor image that lands in one sentence. He explains why hardy hibiscus cannot be propagated offshore like almost everything else in the trade, why every cultivar he releases starts with the letters RUT, and what he does with graduate students that put three of them in first, second and third place at the same symposium. Ping brings her own hibiscus story too, from Chengdu, where Hibiscus mutabilis is the city flower.

Listen Time: 52:28

Dr. John Ruter, Armitage Professor of Horticulture, University of Georgia, and Director of the UGA Trial Gardens. He teaches three courses and runs an ornamental plant breeding program covering both herbaceous and woody plants. Past and current work includes hibiscus, Ilex, camellias, conifers, Salvia, Pycnanthemum and Lagerstroemia. His first release, the holly Emerald Colonnade, is now used as a boxwood replacement on estates.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu, UGA Department of Horticulture

“And we ended up picking seven out of 1,200 to keep.”

“it looked like old shag carpet growing on the leaves, and we noticed that they had zero damage”

“The hybrid ends up with three sets of chromosomes and somebody doesn’t have a dance partner.”

“So it’s always a number game.”

“I don’t baby them, I don’t hold their hand, I don’t call them every day and say this is what you’re doing today.”

Hibiscus sawfly. A Hymenoptera insect, so it sits in the bee family. The larvae are what chew the foliage. The adults look like a little black fly with a red orange thorax. Georgia gets four generations a year, which is why it turns into a real production problem rather than a nuisance.

Trichomes. Plant hairs. Hibiscus grandiflorus is loaded with them, and that physical barrier is what gives it complete sawfly resistance. Breeding the trait in has a visible cost: the trichomes shift the red foliage toward a matte red-gray rather than a glossy red.

Lodging. John gives the definition himself. It is an agronomic term for falling over, and it was one of the original flaws he set out to fix in the hardy hibiscus of the late 2000s, alongside late spring emergence.

Heterosis. Also called hybrid vigor. His mutabilis by taiwanensis F1 hybrids hit ten to twelve feet in a single season, which is the effect working exactly as advertised and also more plant than any nurseryman wanted.

Ploidy, and why crosses fail. The hardy hibiscus native to the eastern United States are diploids, two sets of chromosomes. The Asian species, including Hibiscus mutabilis, taiwanensis and Hibiscus syriacus, the Rose of Sharon, are generally tetraploids with four sets, and their base chromosome number is different too. Cross a diploid with a tetraploid and the offspring gets three sets. One set has nothing to pair with at meiosis, and the plant is sterile. John compares such a hybrid to a mule.

Cultivar name versus marketing name. The cultivar name is the permanent botanical identifier and it is often deliberately nonsensical, which is why UGA settled on the RUT prefix for everything out of John’s program. The trademark or marketing name is what appears on the pot, and in the last ten to fifteen years the companies have wanted to choose that themselves, along with the series name.

The one-year patent clock. In the United States, a public disclosure that reads as an offer for sale starts a twelve-month window to file a plant patent. That is why an unreleased selection photographed on a garden tour, or printed in a catalog by accident, becomes an urgent filing rather than a minor problem.

Mountain mint. John’s program holds 16 or 17 of the 19 native Pycnanthemum species and has just finished a four-year garden trial. Only two named cultivars exist. It is a strong pollinator plant, and the species are distinct enough that you can often tell them apart by the scent of the foliage.

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu

Episode Release Date: August 30th, 2026

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱

Gamma rays, seedless shrubs, and the unglamorous skill that still beats every fancy technique.

There is a cobalt source on the Oregon State campus, and Dr. Ryan Contreras uses it on plants. He describes the method with a shrug and a movie line: “The Forrest Gump, life is like a box of chocolates. We never know what we’re going to get. We’re just taking a shotgun and pointing it and blasting and then growing out populations of those looking for useful variation.” That is mutagenesis, one tool among many in a program that keeps germplasm or small projects on close to 50 genera.

Ping asked Ryan for the whole toolkit, and he gives it: sexual recombination as the workhorse, crossing elite by elite to move fire blight resistance into a plant the industry already likes, ploidy manipulation to make seedless forms the way a triploid banana is seedless, chemical and radiation mutagenesis, targeted gene editing, and the tissue culture step that woody plants keep refusing to cooperate with. He explains why ornamental breeders rarely backcross, since woody plants suffer from inbreeding depression and many will not self-pollinate at all. Then he shows where the ideas actually come from: a Kolkwitzia he taught for years because it was climbing over a seven-foot privacy fence onto the sidewalk, a Philadelphus madrensis whose fragrance reached him from a hundred feet away at the Santa Cruz Arboretum, and growers in Oregon asking him to fix cherry laurel.

Underneath the techniques runs an argument that will not go out of style, because it never went in. The technique Ryan relies on most is walking the plots and looking at plants, and he has thirteen years of lilac sequencing without a validated marker to show for the alternative. He is unusually candid about the misses too: a triploid Cotoneaster with pink flowers, good fall color, and total fire blight resistance that nobody wanted because it had no berries, and a flat admission that some of what he releases over a career will be duds. Growers, students, and anyone who has wondered how a new shrub gets to a garden center will find something to take home.

Listen Time: 52:52

Dr. Ryan Contreras, Professor, Department of Horticulture, Oregon State University. Ornamental and woody plant breeder, at OSU since December 2009. He earned his PhD with Dr. John Ruter at UGA (Tifton), his master’s with Dr. Tom Ranney at NC State, and his first taste of plant breeding as an undergraduate working with Denny Werner on Buddleja.

Dr. Ping Yu, host, UGA Department of Horticulture.

The toolkit, plainly explained. Ryan starts from the idea that breeding is not a complicated science: create variation, then choose. Everything else is method. He walks through recombination, elite by elite crossing, ploidy manipulation for seedless forms, EMS and gamma mutagenesis, transgenics, and targeted editing, and he is honest about where woody plants stall. Corn, cotton, soy, and wheat have chromosome-level genome assemblies and known gene targets. Nursery crops mostly do not, and regeneration from undifferentiated callus is the bottleneck.

Ideas arrive by accident as often as by plan. The Philadelphus breeding program at OSU exists because a fragrance carried a hundred feet across the Santa Cruz Arboretum and Ryan went to find its source. The Kolkwitzia project exists because the only teaching specimen he could reach was hanging over a fence, bulletproof and far too big.

A grower said no, and the program changed. Ryan brought polyploid arborvitae that would not brown in winter to A&R Spada Farms and heard “I don’t care about that.” Customers call about winter browning, the nursery tells them to wait two months, the plants green up, and the calls stop. What the grower wanted instead was spruce spider mite resistance, which costs real money every season.

Who the plants are for. His triploid Cotoneaster survived 4 degrees Fahrenheit unprotected in a container, resists fire blight, roots well, and has pink flowers and good fall color. It has no berries, so the market passed. He kept a few plants and took the lesson.

Advice for students. Learn how the plants are grown before anything else. In his program nobody leaves without doing flow cytometry, looking at pollen under a microscope, sticking cuttings, and processing seed. His closing plug is for IPPS, where students meet growers and see operations.

“You go to the field, and you go to the field some more, and when the wheat plants start to talk to you, you’ve made it.”

“I would say, I think of it like at a lot of nurseries, the lowest paid person is the most important person, it’s the watering.”

“I’m not breeding plants for what I think I want. I’m breeding plants for what people who are in the industry, what they need and what they want.”

“There’s no shortage of nearly unattainable goals. We want a plant to get three feet in one year and then not grow anymore, require no fertilizer and flower 52 weeks a year.”

“So everything is gonna come back around and it takes me 17 years to release a cultivar.”

Creating variation, then choosing. Ryan’s working definition of plant breeding: observe variation and select something better for the trait you care about. Sexual recombination, through a deliberate cross or collected seed, remains the most common and easiest way to get that variation.

Elite by elite. Crossing two good parents does not mean two perfect parents. In Cotoneaster, Ryan takes a plant that grows well in production and has the shape the industry wants but lacks fire blight resistance, and crosses it with a resistant plant to bring the two together.

Ploidy manipulation. Doubling or changing the number of chromosome sets. In Ryan’s program the most common reason is seedlessness: bananas are triploid, and triploidy renders them seedless. The same trick applied to nursery crops removes unwanted fruit and volunteer seedlings.

Mutagenesis, targeted and not. Non-targeted mutagenesis uses chemicals such as ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) or physical mutagens such as x-rays and gamma rays. OSU’s radiation center has fast neutrons and a cobalt source that gives off gamma radiation. Targeted editing is the newer path and depends on knowing which gene to aim at.

The regeneration bottleneck. Gene editing and transgenics usually require regenerating a whole plant from undifferentiated callus tissue. Most woody ornamentals will not do it. New work on introducing CRISPR through non-tissue-culture-based methods would remove that step, which Ryan calls another huge leap forward.

Backcrossing and inbreeding depression. A backcross means crossing a hybrid offspring back to one of its parents, as Ping defines it in the episode. Woody ornamentals are highly heterozygous and tend to suffer from inbreeding depression, and many will not self-pollinate. Hibiscus syriacus cultivars mostly self at very low rates, and the few seeds you get are weaker. Ryan’s workaround is what he calls a pseudo-backcross: existing Hibiscus syriacus by Hibiscus paramutabilis hybrids crossed back to H. syriacus for cold hardiness, improving on Tosca, Lohengrin, and Resi.

Remontancy and reblooming. Repeat flowering reset customer expectations for whole genera: Encore azaleas, Endless Summer hydrangeas, Knock Out roses. Environment can fake it. ‘Palibin’ lilac has no reblooming genes, but shear it in early spring and it will flower in July, which Ryan saw in full bloom at Van Essen Nursery in late July. Telling a gene from a management effect is why field observations get validated with markers.

Markers and QTLs, in perspective. Marker-assisted breeding has clear wins: nematode resistance in peanut, and the hazelnut program next door to Ryan that broke eastern filbert blight. His lilac work has been running since 2013 without a validated, effective marker, which is why he keeps asking whether a technique is getting him closer to a cultivar.

Pest and disease terms from the episode. Shot hole disease and seediness in cherry laurel (Laurocerasus), western cherry fruit fly and the shipping restrictions it creates for Oregon growers, fire blight in Cotoneaster, spruce spider mite in arborvitae, and rhodoxanthin, the pigment behind that brown or purple cast on ‘Smaragd’ arborvitae in winter.

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu

Episode Release Date: August 16, 2026

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱

Growers spent years assuming the red-headed flea beetle flew in from the field edge. Dr. Shimat Joseph went looking for it out there and found almost nothing. When his lab sampled the landscapes around Georgia container nurseries, the beetle simply was not present, and nobody was reporting it as a landscape problem either. The pest was already home. The well-drained pine bark container that growers built for their plants turns out to be the exact combination of drainage and moisture retention the larvae need, which means the nursery is not being invaded so much as hosting a permanent resident.

Dr. Ping Yu walks Dr. Joseph through the whole animal in this episode. Why the name has three separate parts to it, red for the tinge on the forehead, flea for the powerful hind leg that lets it jump, beetle for the chewing mouthparts. What the damage actually looks like as adults rasp the tissue between the veins until the leaf shot-holes, skeletonizes, and drops. Why a plant that would be perfectly healthy in a garden is worthless in a nursery, because ornamental stock sells on looks. And how the whole cycle, egg to adult, can turn over in about a month at 80 to 85 degrees.

What makes the conversation unusual is how often the answer is “we don’t know yet.” Sex ratio, eggs per female, how long adults live, how many times they mate: Dr. Joseph declines to guess on all of it, and explains why guessing would be worse than admitting the gap. There is still plenty here for growers to act on, including which products his trials screened as effective, why an April drench or granule application can protect a block for months, and why protecting one block just pushes the beetles onto the next one over.

Listen Time: 42:17

Dr. Shimat Joseph, Associate Professor, Department of Entomology, University of Georgia (Griffin campus). Dr. Joseph works on insect problems in turf and ornamental systems, in nurseries and landscapes. He joined UGA in 2017, and red-headed flea beetle is the main focus of his nursery work. His lab publishes applied research and a blog for the turf and ornamental industries.

The industry assumption was backwards. The long-held view was that beetles flew in from surrounding landscape, fed on weeds along the field edges, and worked their way in. Dr. Joseph’s sampling found none in the landscapes at all, and no reports of the beetle as a landscape pest. His conclusion is that the major driver is the nursery itself.

The container is a purpose-built habitat. Larvae need moisture but not standing water. Pine bark in a nursery container drains fast and still retains moisture, which is precisely the balance the beetle needs. Growers optimized their substrate for plant roots and accidentally optimized it for this pest too.

Only one life stage costs money. Larvae feed on roots in the container, but Dr. Joseph’s team has found no evidence of economic root damage. Adults are the destructive stage, because ornamental crops are sold on appearance and shot-holed foliage does not sell.

Timing cannot be modeled the usual way. Generations three and four overlap so heavily that they cannot be told apart, and different host plants speed up or slow down development. That rules out the growing degree day approach that works for many other pests.

Protecting one block moves the problem. Spray a block of hydrangea and that block is protected, but the beetles get pushed onto neighboring plants they would not normally choose. Understanding that movement is an active research question in the lab right now.

“And I think the containers in the nurseries are providing exactly that, and they just love it and they just stay there and continue their population.”

“We can guess it, but I think the guessing may not be right here. So that’s why I’m not giving a number to it.”

“But eventually what happens is that they’re, they’re– we are pushing them to other plants and, uh, where they normally won’t go.”

“It is good enough that different growers can strategize that according to their marketing window.”

“There’s a lot of going on behind the scene where the plant is growing, and they have all those interactions with the pest, and they have to combat the whole challenges to be able to come to your door.”

Systena frontalis is the scientific name for the red-headed flea beetle. It is not spoken in the episode, and is included here so listeners searching for the research have the right term.

Chrysomelidae is the beetle family Dr. Joseph names in the episode, the leaf beetles. It is a large and varied group, and Japanese beetle belongs to it as well. Red-headed flea beetle is a leaf feeder within that family, and while it can feed on flowers, no flower damage has been observed in Dr. Joseph’s work.

Three parts to one name. Red for the reddish tinge on the forehead. Flea for the enlarged hind leg that powers the jump. Beetle for the hardened forewings and the biting, chewing mouthparts.

Chewing versus piercing mouthparts. Beetles crush and ingest leaf tissue with mandibles. Contrast that with a mosquito, whose mouthparts form a straw containing six needles, called stylets, used to inject saliva and digest tissue before drawing it up. That difference in mouthparts is what separates the damage signatures growers see in the field.

Shot hole describes the small perforations left after adults feed repeatedly on the same leaf area. Tissue is rasped away, the fed area sinks, disintegrates, and opens.

Skeletonization is the end state. Adults feed on the tissue between the veins, and with enough feeding only the vein network remains before the leaf drops.

Instar means a stage between molts. Insects grow inside a rigid exoskeleton and cannot expand gradually the way we do, so they shed and rebuild. Dr. Joseph’s team believes red-headed flea beetle passes through about three larval instars, though the number is not confirmed.

Molting is that shedding process. Dr. Joseph corrects himself on air from “eclosion” to “molting,” a useful distinction: eclosion refers to emergence, typically from the egg or the pupa.

Holometabolous describes complete metamorphosis, where the larva looks nothing like the adult and reorganizes entirely during a pupal resting stage. Monarch butterfly is the familiar example Dr. Joseph reaches for.

Phenology is the study of the timing of biological events across a season, which is what Dr. Joseph’s graduate student is mapping for this pest.

The numbers stated in the episode: eggs laid from the surface down to about 10 centimeters deep, roughly three weeks as larvae, a couple of weeks as pupae, about six days for a new adult to feed and mate, and about one month for the full egg-to-adult cycle at 80 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Cooler weather stretches all of it out.

Endosymbionts are microorganisms living inside an insect, such as specific gut bacteria, that can skew the sex ratio of a population. Dr. Joseph raises them as a possible explanation for sex ratio questions his lab has not yet studied in this beetle.

Foliar spray treats the leaf surface and targets adults. Drench applies product to the growing medium, and granules release it into the container over time. Drench and granule applications made early, around April, can leave residues that stop adults feeding for multiple months.

Multi-pronged is Dr. Joseph’s own framing. A single foliar spray on a single crop will not solve this, because adults simply move to another block and complete a generation there.

Dr. Joseph names four chemistries. What follows is current label and registration context, verified after recording, so growers can act on it correctly. This is background, not a recommendation. The label is the law, and product registration, rates, sites, and restrictions must be confirmed for your state before any application.

| Named on air | Active ingredient | Notes verified after recording |

Resistance management. The IRAC group numbers above matter for rotation. Alternating products that share a group does not slow resistance, and this pest gets hit repeatedly across four overlapping generations in a season.

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu

Episode Release Date: August 2, 2026

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱

In 1951, nurseries still grew plants in tin cans, and information on rooting hormones was hard to come by. The society that formed to close that gap, the International Plant Propagators Society, is now the International Plant Production Society, and its Southern Region leads every IPPS region in the world for membership. Dr. Ping Yu sits down with Brie Arthur, “Brie the Plant Lady,” International Delegate and Communications Director for IPPS Southern Region, to explain how a 75-year-old organization keeps drawing in the next generation.

Brie has been part of IPPS for more than a decade, and she traces nearly every mentor in her career back to it: Fred Davies, David Creech, Tom Saunders, Tom Yeager. She walks through the region’s scholarships, including the Coach Vince Dooley Student Scholarship and the Margie Jenkins First-Time Conference Attendee Scholarship, and tells the story of the 2014 Early Career Exchange that sent her to Denmark. Ping adds her own memory of meeting Tom Yeager at the 2019 student competition and feeling, in her words, like she had met a celebrity.

The conversation keeps returning to one idea: plants bring people together, but the people are the reason anyone gathers. Ping and Brie make the case for showing up in person, for the talk on the bus and the conversation at dinner that no webinar reproduces. Whether you grow plants for a living, teach horticulture, or picked it up in retirement, there is a seat for you. The next meeting is in Houston, October 2026.

Listen Time: 48:07

Brie Arthur (“Brie the Plant Lady”), International Delegate and Communications Director, IPPS Southern Region. A Purdue-trained horticulturist who was introduced to IPPS as an undergraduate, Brie now focuses on consumer horticulture and food gardening, translating technical nursery research for master gardeners and home growers.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu, UGA Department of Horticulture, and a member of the IPPS Southern Region board.

Brie Arthur: “The mission of IPPS is to seek and share plant knowledge globally, and it is a global network of plant production professionals.”

Brie Arthur: “Plants are what unite us, but it’s the time we spend together that is what truly matters.”

Brie Arthur: “I was the recipient of the exchange program in 2014, and I went to Denmark, and it completely changed my life.”

Dr. Ping Yu: “This organization has lifted me up, and now it’s time for me to pay it forward.”

Brie Arthur: “The future is green.”

From Propagators to Production. IPPS kept its acronym but changed its name from the International Plant Propagators Society to the International Plant Production Society. The reason is structural: a modern nursery might specialize only in young plants, or only in growing those plants on to finish. “Production” covers the whole cycle rather than one step of it.

Why 1951 mattered. When IPPS started, auxins and other natural plant hormones were just being discovered, and there was no easy way to share rooting techniques without a society and its published proceedings. The original purpose was to let academics get propagation information to a young, growing nursery profession.

Propagation, plainly. A nursery produces plants from seed, cutting, or graft. Improved, well-bred genetics are often patented, which is part of why young-plant nurseries exist: they can manage the royalties before the plant moves down the production line.

Substrates and particle size. Brie points listeners to the soilless substrate research of Dr. Jeb Fields (formerly LSU, now University of Florida) and Dr. Brian Jackson. Particle size governs how long a mix holds water and fertilizer. Stratified substrates layer different particle sizes for better performance, but they need multiple potting machines, so commercial adoption is slow. Home container gardeners can use the same idea without the machinery.

Hot pots and sun scald. Dr. Jeremy Pickens gave a talk this year on how dark containers heat the root zone as summers get hotter. White containers keep roots cooler, which is why Brie tells home growers to use ornamental white pots for container tomatoes to reduce sun scald.

Southern native trees and shrubs. Margie Jenkins built one of Louisiana’s most important nurseries specializing in southern natives, a category Brie says still needs more development.

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu

Episode Release Date: July 19, 2026

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱

Most of us start the day with a cup of coffee and never think about the plant it came from. Dr. Leo Lombardini has thought about it for years. Head of the Horticulture Department at the University of Georgia and former director of the Borlaug Center for World Coffee at Texas A&M, Leo walks Ping through the whole journey: from a tiny white flower on a tropical shrub to the seed inside a coffee cherry to the roasted bean in your grinder.

Along the way you will learn why only about three of the 133 species in the Coffea genus end up in your cup, what “shade-grown, mountain-grown” actually does to flavor, and how three different processing methods (natural, honey, and washed) change a coffee before it ever reaches a roaster. Leo also explains a fact that surprises most drinkers: caffeine content barely moves during roasting, so a dark roast is not a stronger jolt.

By the end, Leo leaves every coffee drinker with a simple habit for the next trip to the store, and a reminder that behind every bag is a farmer who spent long days in the field. This one is for anyone who loves their morning ritual and wants to taste it a little differently tomorrow.

Listen Time: 55:23

Dr. Leo Lombardini has been Head of the Department of Horticulture at the University of Georgia since 2019. A native of Florence, Italy, Leo earned his PhD at Michigan State and spent years at Texas A&M, where he directed the Borlaug Center for World Coffee and studied pecan for roughly 15 years. His research spans coffee and pecan, and he co-led a USAID-funded project helping nine Central American countries fight coffee leaf rust.

“So most of the coffee we drink, certainly specialty coffee, comes from the Coffea arabica species, which is one of 133 species in the Coffea genus.”

“According to statistics, there are over two million jobs in the United States that revolve around coffee.”

“When you look at a coffee bean, one side is flat and one side is curved, because the two flat sides face each other.”

“If the coffee is good, you literally don’t have to add any sugar or any creamer or milk or whatever. You just drink it straight, and that’s really how you can evaluate the quality of coffee.”

“There’s so much work behind a cup of coffee, and so much sweat, and time spent in the field, just like for all horticulture crops. Never forget that behind anything we eat, there’s a farmer.”

The Coffea genus. There are 133 species of coffee, most of them native to Africa, and Madagascar alone holds 67 of them. Only about three are cultivated: Coffea arabica (roughly 65% of world consumption), Coffea canephora, known as Robusta (about 35%), and Coffea liberica (under 1%, mostly consumed locally). Arabica is prized because it is the mildest.

Arabica vs. Robusta. Arabica came from the western highlands of Ethiopia, a cool, cloudy, high-altitude cloud forest, and it evolved as a shade plant under larger trees. That is why shade-grown, mountain-grown Arabica reaches the highest quality, with ideal temperatures around 70 to 80 degrees. Robusta comes from lowland equatorial Africa across a much larger range, so it tolerates heat and resists pests and diseases better thanks to a broader genetic pool. Many modern Arabica varieties carry a little Robusta ancestry from hybridization that added disease resistance.

Coffee leaf rust. A fungal disease and the worst threat to the coffee crop. The 2012–2013 Central American outbreak combined climate, new fungal strains, and economic pressure into what Leo calls a “perfect storm.”

The coffee cherry. The fruit resembles a cherry, but unlike a cherry it holds two seeds surrounded by a sugary, watery pulp. Because that pulp ferments and rots fast once the fruit is bruised at harvest, processing has to start immediately.

Three ways to process. Natural: whole fruits dry in the sun on patios or raised beds for two to three weeks, and the pulp dries onto the seed, common where water is scarce, such as Yemen. Honey: a depulper removes the pulp, and the seeds dry with their sticky mucilage (a pectin, the same kind used for jams) still on. Washed: the pulp is removed and the seeds soak in water tanks for 24 to 48 hours, where natural yeasts ferment and break down the mucilage. After any method, seeds are dried to 10 to 12% moisture so they will not germinate or spoil.

Green coffee. Beans are shipped unroasted in 60-kilogram bags. Green beans are hard, taste grassy, and smell nothing like coffee. Only roasting develops the familiar aroma and flavor.

Roasting: time and temperature. Drum roasters work like a clothes dryer at about 400 degrees Fahrenheit, with each cycle running roughly 18 to 22 minutes. Roasters trade time against temperature to hit a target roast level. Caffeine (about 1 to 1.5% of the dry bean) is stable and does not change during roasting. Acidity, counterintuitively a marker of high quality in coffee, decreases the longer beans roast, so light-to-medium roasts let you taste a coffee’s best traits.

Why caffeine is there at all. Caffeine is an alkaloid the plant produces as a natural deterrent against pests and diseases, packed most heavily into the seeds to protect the next generation.

Reading the label. “100% Arabica” tells you something about quality. A bag that says only “100% coffee” means some Robusta is blended in.

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu

Episode Release Date: July 5, 2026

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱

A tag you never have to look at. That’s the promise behind the RFID work Dr. Jim Robbins and Dr. Joe Maja have been chasing for the better part of two decades — a way to walk past a block of containers, or fly over it, and know exactly what’s there without picking up a single pot. In Part 2 of this special two-parter, Ping picks the conversation back up where it left off, this time digging into the applied research: how passive UHF tags work, what a drone-mounted reader can do that a barcode scanner can’t, and why the real payoff isn’t counting plants — it’s tracing them from propagation all the way to the checkout line.

Joe walks through the practical side a grower actually cares about: traditional tags versus RFID, where to start (small, with a single block or a high-value crop), how to pick a vendor who understands that moisture and container materials change everything, and the honest math on cost. Jim fills in the origin story and the “lower step” version of the system for nurseries that aren’t ready to tag every plant. Along the way the two of them land on the lessons that only show up after twenty years in the field — that simple beats sophisticated, that reliability matters more than precision, and that the projects that actually work are the ones where engineers, horticulturists, and growers are all in the room.

Then they look down the road: integrated systems where drones, RFID, robots, and AI finally talk to each other, a realistic adoption forecast, and a warm closing on why collaboration — the kind that built this whole project — is the thing worth betting on. Recorded with Joe joining live from Japan.

Listen Time: 29:18

“The advantage is that it doesn’t require line of, line of sight. And if we could attach the plant… And then just fly over the top and simply count these things, we thought this was brilliant.” — Jim Robbins (02:11)

“Instead of scanning one plant at a time, you can scan hundreds or even thousands of plants in a matter of seconds.” — Joe Maja (09:15)

“It’s not just about inventory, it’s about connecting the entire life cycle.” — Joe Maja (12:12)

“We’ve also seen that reliability is often more important than precision. A system that works consistently, even if it’s not perfect, is more valuable than one that’s highly precise but unreliable.” — Joe Maja (13:48)

“The interest has clearly shifted from ‘What is this?’ to ‘How do I use this?’ And that’s usually a strong sign that the technology is moving toward mainstream adoption.” — Joe Maja (16:16)

“You guys set a great example of how collaboration works and how collaboration matters.” — Ping Yu (27:39)

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu

Episode Release Date: June 28, 2026

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱

Sometimes the most interesting plant science doesn’t come from a plant person at all. In this special two-part episode, Ping sits down with two collaborators who’ve spent fifteen years figuring out how drones can work in nursery and greenhouse production — Dr. Jim Robbins, a retired University of Arkansas extension specialist who’s loved plants since he was fifteen, and Dr. Joe Maja, an engineer who freely admits he wasn’t a plant person before the two of them met. Their accidental partnership, sparked by a 2009 question about counting plants in a field nursery, is the thread that runs through the whole conversation.

Part 1 is the grower’s field guide. What actually counts as a “drone,” and why does 55 pounds matter so much? Which license do you need — Part 107, Part 137, or both — and who regulates what? What are the five things a nursery can realistically do with a drone right now, from five-hundred-dollar marketing cameras to RFID inventory readers Joe is shrinking small enough to fly? And the question Ping keeps circling back to: does any of this actually pencil out, or should you just hire someone to fly for you?

Whether you’re a commercial grower weighing your first purchase, a student curious about precision ag, or a plant lover who likes a good origin story, this one rewards a full listen. Part 2 takes the conversation deeper into the RFID inventory work itself.

Listen Time: 66:20

Follow Along with the Transcript

“The choice shouldn’t be driven by the platform itself. It should be driven by the application. Whether it’s imaging, monitoring, or spraying, the key question is: what problems are you trying to solve?” — Dr. Joe Maja

“Think of your driver’s license — just a regular driver’s license. But if you wanted to be a certified CDL, it’s a much more expensive and involved process. And the same is true once we jump above 55 pounds.” — Dr. Jim Robbins

“The outdoor environment is very rough on engineered solutions.” — Dr. Jim Robbins

“I wasn’t a plant person before working with James, and my training was purely in engineering, so I approached everything from a systems and problem-solving perspective.” — Dr. Joe Maja

“I think the future solution is less about different hardware and more about smarter software.” — Dr. Joe Maja

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu

Episode Release Date: June 21, 2026

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱

How three women build the education that powers the green industry’s biggest event

Every July, thousands of growers, retailers, and plant lovers flood Columbus, Ohio for Cultivate — and behind roughly 160 education sessions packed into four days is a team of three. In this episode, Ping sits down with the AmericanHort education team: Meagan Nace, Rachel Rawls, and Alejandra Feliciano, Ph.D. They pull back the curtain on what it takes to plan the industry’s largest event, from the 400 to 500 session proposals they sift through each year to the speakers they lock in more than twelve months ahead.

But Cultivate is only the headline. The conversation moves into the education that runs all year long — Mastery Series deep dives, grower certifications, a brand-new badging program, the Grow Forward series for personal and professional growth, and live Spanish interpretation that opens every webinar to a broader audience. Alejandra explains why mirroring English programming in Spanish matters, and why having Hispanic researchers serve a Hispanic audience changes who gets reached.

For researchers and extension professionals wondering how to get involved, the team has a one-word answer: reach out. They share exactly what makes a session proposal stand out, why the practical “golden nugget” beats theory every time, and what keeps them coming back to the work. And yes — before the conversation ends, everyone names their favorite plant of the day.

Listen Time: 55:40

“I’m not sure that planning for Cultivate ever stops. We’re already looking at 2027.” — Meagan Nace (08:48)

“If it’s trending but it doesn’t change any decision-making or outcomes, it’s probably not gonna make the cut for education.” — Rachel Rawls (20:56)

“We have a complete ecosystem of educational products that meets our industry and individuals where they’re at in their career and in their stage of life.” — Meagan Nace (29:44)

“The number one word that resonates in my mind is we’re a partner to Extension and researchers, because we fulfill that outreach goal.” — Alejandra Feliciano (40:58)

“They really are the secret sauce behind education at Cultivate, and everything at Cultivate.” — Meagan Nace, on the volunteer community connectors (35:42)

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu

Episode Release Date: June 14, 2026

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱

Ping calls it “garden therapy.” Dr. Sheri Dorn gently corrects her — and that correction opens up a whole world.

Ping sits down with her colleague and friend Dr. Sheri Dorn, who took on a new role at the University of Georgia in August as assistant professor of socio-horticulture and horticultural therapy. Within the first two minutes, Sheri lovingly catches Ping using the loose term “garden therapy” — and that small correction becomes the thread that runs through the whole conversation. There’s a real difference between horticultural therapy (a clinical setting with a therapist, a client, and a goal), therapeutic horticulture (the benefits of a group gardening session), and socio-horticulture (the big bucket that holds every economic, environmental, social, and health benefit plants give us). Sorting those terms out turns out to be the difference between a feel-good hobby and a documented science.

From there the conversation ranges across Sheri’s path into the field — a childhood spent in an enormous inherited family vegetable garden, her mentorship under People-Plant Council pioneer Dr. Diane Relf at Virginia Tech, and the “plant magic” she first watched happen in community gardens. She walks through the research that explains why gardening lowers cortisol and blood pressure, why how often you garden matters as much as that you do it at all, and the landmark 1980s hospital-window study that showed surgery patients recovered faster when they could see a garden instead of a brick wall.

If you’re a grower, there’s a marketing message here you can take to the bank. If you’re a plant enthusiast, there’s a clear, encouraging on-ramp: try a basil cutting, sow some lettuce, call your county Extension office, and build from there. And if you’ve ever joked that gardening is cheaper than a therapist, Sheri has thoughts about that very expensive tomato.

Listen Time: 48:38

Follow Along with this Episode’s Transcript

Dr. Sheri Dorn — Assistant Professor of Socio-Horticulture and Horticultural Therapy, UGA Department of Horticulture & State Botanical Garden of Georgia. Formerly the State of Georgia Master Gardener coordinator. Bachelor’s and master’s in horticulture from Virginia Tech (working under Dr. Diane Relf and the People-Plant Council), PhD from the University of Georgia. She is building UGA’s new horticultural therapy certificate program.

“I like to say that my parents nearly killed my career in horticulture before it got started, because it was — honest to goodness, Ping — it was the family vegetable garden, and we had a huge one.” — Dr. Sheri Dorn (04:21)

“Those people, nine times out of ten, would not speak to each other if they ran into each other in the grocery store… But they have bonded over growing the plants.” — Dr. Sheri Dorn, on community gardens (08:55)

“I think the biggest misconception is that all gardening is therapy.” — Dr. Sheri Dorn (15:17)

“It was very clear that the patients that viewed the garden had a shorter hospital stay, took fewer pain medications, and they were less obnoxious, essentially… They were better patients, Ping.” — Dr. Sheri Dorn, on the Ulrich study (21:11)

“Don’t forget the people side of plants. We won’t have an industry if there aren’t people buying our plants.” — Dr. Sheri Dorn (30:19)

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu

Episode Release Date: June 7, 2026

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱

Season 2 opens with Lanie Riner — greenhouse grower, farm kid turned Executive Director of the Georgia Green Industry Association, and the person who wrote the letter that helped strengthen Georgia’s Freedom to Farm protections. Lanie runs GGIA while running Thunderwood Farms in Meriwether County, and she brings both perspectives to a conversation about what it takes to advocate for an industry that, as she puts it, “puts nature back in place.”

Ping and Lanie go back to a Ginkgo biloba tree and a job interview. From there, the conversation covers GGIA’s 35-year history, the COVID-era fight to keep horticulture classified as essential, the OSHA heat rule that could reshape outdoor work, and a Capitol Day tradition where plants are the only agricultural commodity that isn’t eaten by sundown. Lanie’s advice for anyone headed to meet a legislator: bring a true story — preferably your own.

The episode also digs into the challenges growers face right now: succession planning for family operations, the two-spot cotton leafhopper and its quarantine implications, H-2A and H-2B labor programs, and the ever-shifting Waters of the U.S. definition. Lanie’s three-to-five-year vision for GGIA centers on a united industry voice and growing the next generation through programs like the Junior Certified Plant Professional.

Listen Time: 50:15

Follow Along with this Episode’s Transcript

Lanie Riner — Executive Director, Georgia Green Industry Association (GGIA); Owner, Thunderwood Farms. UGA horticulture graduate who started as a pharmacy student, found her way to Miller Plant Sciences, and built a career spanning greenhouse production and statewide industry advocacy. She personally testified before OSHA on the proposed heat rule and led the effort to secure essential-industry status for Georgia’s green industry during the 2020 shutdown.

“In our society, throughout every society, we learn through storytelling. … When you go to talk to a legislator or a regulator, whatever the point is that you are trying to make, it needs to be a true story. That’s the first thing. And it needs to — it’s even better if it’s your story.”

“We put nature back in place. But it’s exactly what we do. Our industry is where people and nature intersect.”

“Yours is the only industry that it is not eaten up at the end of the day.”

“We could not advocate for our industry at all without our university partners and extension. Extension provides that unbiased scientific support. It’s not an opinion.”

“We are stronger when we work together.”

Blooms and Beyond explores plant history, culture, and management through the lens of science. Whether you’re a commercial grower seeking practical solutions, a student exploring careers in horticulture, or simply someone who loves plants and their stories, there’s something here for you. Hosted by Dr. Ping Yu of the University of Georgia, each episode features interviews with experts who share enchanting stories, cutting-edge research, and practical wisdom from the world of horticulture.

Your benefit: After each episode, commercial growers will have at least one useful tip for their operation, and plant enthusiasts will have an interesting fact to share. That’s how we spread plant power to more people and make our environment a little better.

Host: Dr. Ping Yu

Episode Release Date: Sunday, May 31st, 2026

“Till next time, stay healthy and go plants!” 🌱