Dr. Kim Williams – Preparing Young Growers for Next Generation Horticulture Careers - Get Up & Grow Podcast EP #3

“We need students who have a passion for plants and technology to look at horticulture as a career.” -Dr. Kim Williams, Kansas State University

On the third episode of the Get Up & Grow Podcast we are excited to be joined by Dr. Kim Williams of Kansas State University. Kim is a professor of Greenhouse Management who grew up as a self-declared "hybrid-farm kid," on her grandparents farm in Great Bend, Kansas. She has extensive knowledge on greenhouse and controlled environment horticulture with hydroponics and other growth mediums. She joined us today to discuss a program that her university has begun implementing in local high schools called "Plant Science with a Purpose: Storylines." This program helps teach high school students about some interesting phenomena that can occur during plant growth under various conditions. Some of the phenomena include red lettuce anthocyanin production under different LED light spectrums. The hopes of this program are to get children interested in growing and pursue horticulture as a career after graduation. With the increasing lack of interest in horticulture as a career these students need all the encouragement they can get.

We discuss some of the following:
• How she first became interested in horticulture and then became a teacher.
• The current types of horticulture careers that are available.
• Strategies for teaching young people about horticulture.
• How light can play a role in anthocyanin production.
• How important sustainability is and how it can be integrated into farms of the future.
• How creating a perfectly controlled environment can have unintended consequences.
• How kids not in the program can get started growing on their own at home.
• The book she helped co-author "Water, Root Media, and Nutrient Management for Greenhouse Crops."

Please check out the following links to what we discussed on the podcast today:

Storylines that use LED lights are available at: https://hnr.k-state.edu/horticulture-storylines/ 

K-State Horticulture resources to get started with gardening: https://hnr.k-state.edu/extension/consumer-horticulture/

Water, Root Media, and Nutrient Management for Greenhouse Crops book: https://anrcatalog.ucanr.edu/Details.aspx?itemNo=3551

This Podcast is dedicated to growers like you so we appreciate your feedback so we can provide the best experience possible for the grower community. 

Now Get Up & Grow! 

Taylor S.

To learn more about our Podcast, our Grower Community Blog or our Grow Light Academy checkout our website here: https://activegrowled.com/

Transcript

00:00
We're trying to also help students see that there are careers in robotics and flying drones and, you know, engineering and computer programming and artificial intelligence that are all a part of the future of our food supply and many other things, of course, but that we need students who

00:30
horticulture as a career. Hi everyone thanks for joining the podcast today. I'm your host Taylor Schaberg owner of Active Grow. We're really excited to have our third guest on today her name is Dr. Kimberly Williams. She is an educator, she is a very passionate person when it comes to horticulture. She has an extensive experience with hydroponics and growing in greenhouses as well as controlled environments and she has some very exciting ideas on how to teach our

01:00
about horticulture and look for the next generation of jobs that are available in the horticultural market. So there's a lot of exciting things that we discuss in this podcast and we're really excited to share it with you. So without further ado, here's our guest, Dr. Kimberly Williams.

01:32
Hi everyone, welcome to the podcast. I'm here with Dr. Kim Williams of Kansas State. It's a pleasure to have you Kim. Thanks so much, it's great to be here. First of all, I wanna say we really are excited to have you on the show and I know you have a super busy schedule educating all those kids and we just wanna say we appreciate you being here. My pleasure. First off, I just wanna get into, can you tell us a bit about Kansas State's

02:02
and Natural Resource Program and your role there? Yeah, sure. So, Kansas State University, K-State for short, is a land-grant university, which means that in addition to teaching and research, we also have the obligation to conduct outreach, which is taking research-based information to the public to support and improve the industries that we serve. Our program has about 110 undergraduate students

02:32
horticulture. And our research programs span the gambit of horticultural commodities that are important in the Midwest U.S. My role in the program, I am a controlled environment production faculty and my appointment is about 60% of my time doing teaching and advising and about 40%

03:02
for the greenhouse industries. I teach five courses which are greenhouse operations management, herbaceous crop production, hydroponic food production, floral crops production and handling, and interior plant scaping. So I'm not an expert in all of those topics but I you know I draw on the the work and the research of my colleagues around the country and the world to to try to keep

03:32
cutting edge. My research is really varied depending on student interest, but it always involves crop production or, you know, that are produced in controlled environments like greenhouses. Wow. And maybe can you tell us a little bit how you first got into hydroponics or horticulture in general? Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, hydroponics is just so cool, isn't it? I mean, we can grow

04:02
any environment that you can manage to provide light for photosynthesis. My story is that I grew up as like a hybrid farm kid in central Kansas, and I found horticulture because I loved flowers and plants growing up. I did my graduate work at North Carolina State University in media and nutrition of greenhouse crops. And though I always reserve the right to change my path, it stuck. And I worked with an

04:32
amazing mentor there, Paul Nelson, who introduced me to commercial hydroponics. And I've been doing it at least as a part of my teaching ever since. And some research in particular with like organic hydroponic fertilization. So I love the subject of greenhouse production because everything is connected. And it's a subject where we have a certain amount of control over all of the inputs into plant growth.

05:02
It really integrates all of the facets of plant growth and development with environmental management. So if I was born to be a teacher, teaching horticulture is the subject that I was absolutely drawn to. That's awesome. So totally passionate about teaching. We appreciate that. You do teach, so undergraduate kids, do you also teach younger kids through this program? I'm gonna get into it. It's called the Plant Science with a Purpose Program.

05:32
Yeah, so I don't teach them. So I teach college students and I have graduate students that help me with the research or actually it's their research. I help them with the research. But with the the plant science horticulture is plant science with a purpose. So this program actually targets high school students.

06:02
in high school biology and science classrooms, which I don't teach in. I bow to the amazing high school science teachers around the world. But certainly in the US, it's a heavy lift to really engage our high schoolers with really fascinating aspects about science.

06:32
Um...

06:35
basically developed these horticulture storylines around the idea of being able to introduce horticulture as a career to every student in high school science classrooms. So I worked to develop the storylines taking really cool aspects of plant science that we thought would kind of capture the interest of high school science kids.

07:05
And their teachers as well, right? Like things that their teachers could see really fitting into their classroom curriculum and meeting the learning goals that they need to achieve. But then at the same time, kind of slipping in, horticulture as a potential career.

07:23
Right, I mean, as a kid, I don't remember much of getting my hands dirty going into the greenhouse or the garden or much of that from my high school experience. So how do we improve on that? Like how have you, you know, given teachers the tools you think to like, like have our next generation access that? Yeah, well, you know, across, certainly in the US and actually across the world,

07:53
the number of students who pursue horticulture as a career. And so our strategy with this project was to

08:05
to connect information about horticulture as a career to every student, not just to students who happen to be at schools with like FFA or agriculture programs, like as you mentioned, depending on where you grow up and where you go to school, there may or may not be those opportunities available. So that led us to pursuing USDA SPECA grant, which is a program,

08:35
specifically designed to target secondary and post-secondary education to try to just, you know, improve, increase the capacity of our workforce in these, you know, critical agriculture areas. And the way that we approached that was to first survey science teachers about what materials they would find useful in their classrooms and then what would incentivize

09:05
what would make them appealing for them to spend some time learning and incorporating into their classrooms. And what we learned is that they needed storylines built around phenomena which align with the next generation science standards. So those are like specific terms that is related to how science is being taught in, I mean, I can only speak to, you

09:35
what I've learned from the teachers in this project in the US right now. But it's instead of kind of delivering fact after fact after fact in lecture format, it's more like giving our high schoolers like just really cool science phenomena is literally what they're called. And then having them ask questions and make observations

10:05
And so I, again, I bow to the amazing high school teachers who can do this really well. Right. And I'm really fortunate that here in Manhattan, Kansas, we have this core group of biology teachers in our public school system. And my daughter actually happened to be in one of those classrooms and she was coming home and she was talking about like, you know, some of the things that we're doing.

10:35
that she was doing and I was like, they're using storylines, like this new sort of learning, well new to me, right? New since I went through school, you know, technique to teach science. And so I was really fortunate that when I approached them with this project, they were like, you know, as a group, they were like, hey, we can see how this could fit into our curriculum. And we'd like to, you know, do some, you know, we'd be willing to do some beta testing for you as a part of this.

11:05
project. So you go to some of these schools and you're part of the team that kind of helps to try to encourage them to incorporate it or? Yeah, I am totally behind the scenes. They're doing their thing with their students in their classrooms. I developed a kit, right, with LED lights.

11:35
in conversations with them and so forth, tried to figure out ways that we could, you know, that they could successfully do these experiments with light in the back of their classrooms and so forth. You know, kind of just matching what I know about like substrates and plant production, never getting into the like the how to teach it, except like, you know, here's what you need storyline wise. So, yeah. What was one of the cool experiments you did?

12:05
about purple lettuces and anthocyanin production? Yeah. So one of the key phenomenon, right? That these storylines are built around is the fact that lettuce that has the capacity to turn red, right? So it has the ability to cultivars that can generate anthocyanins in their cells. Like I'm just talking about like your basic, like butterhead lettuce varieties or lettuce that would be grown

12:35
greens and hydroponic systems. And there are many varieties that will turn red, when they're exposed to like high blue, high percentages of blue light and a little bit of UV light also really helps this response. And so if you grow them under an absence of those light quality,

13:05
So in the back of the classroom, teachers can have students design an experiment with these cultivars of lettuce and put them under different light qualities, see which ones turn red, and then have the students like, okay, well, why is that? What's going on there? And this group of amazing biology teachers that I've been working with at Manhattan High

13:35
So they teach about how UV levels in the sun have resulted in the evolution of different amounts of melanin in skin color over time. And then they pair that with this storyline about how lettuce and other crops will develop

14:05
produced under these high blue and high energy wavelengths like blue and UV. So at the same time though, right, they're slipping in some video clips of here are careers that you can have in vertical farming and using robotics and horticulture and really cool aspects of our industry that are being introduced to students who otherwise would

14:35
really maybe not don't even know where their salad comes from, you know, so. So that's the idea behind it. And where does it come from most of the time, hundreds of miles away or down the street? Well, we it depends on where you live, right? In urban areas, there are some good vertical farm options, but and we have actually here in our community, a number of local producers.

15:05
Still, certainly when we shop in the grocery stores, a lot of it's coming from California and Florida, shipped thousands of miles. Yeah, unfortunately. Well, is there any other plans for the program? What are the next experiments you have lined up? Well, so we've been in the beta testing phase, right? And I now with Manhattan High in their second year.

15:35
in the Kansas City area and so more in Eastern Kansas. We've had actually now 1,100 students go through some iteration of the storylines. And so I've taken that feedback, working on improving them, but they are posted and out there for anybody to take a look at and use. The grant allowed me to provide these back of the classroom kits

16:05
for the teachers who have done the beta testing, but of course that's not possible on a country-wide basis. So I think that's like one of the challenges, right? Which is like getting the right lights that are going to give the teachers the responses that they can use as a jumping off point for teaching students these cool phenomenon. And actually to your question, there's another phenomenon

16:35
based around, which is the fact that some plants, like some varieties of tomatoes, for example, will develop this funky physiological disorder called intumescence, where the cells like kind of hypertrophy, they kind of become cancerous in the absence of light. So, so that's, that's like a separate storyline. And, you know, it provides another option

17:05
teachers to like maybe, you know, when they're talking about say cell biology, you know, and how, you know, all of the organisms on earth have evolved under the light spectra that the Sun provides. And, you know, so what are some of the evolutionary phenomena that have evolved because of that? You said in the absence of UV light, there's some atrophy. Yes, interestingly. Interesting. Yeah.

17:35
there was a greenhouse that had some epoxy or something, and it was blocking the UV, and it created that kind of funny tomato plant. Replicating the sunlight is still a technology that we're striving to achieve. It's hard to mimic Mother Nature, isn't it? It is, and I think when we think we've got it all figured out, and we are like, oh, we

18:05
There are unintended consequences sometimes of thinking that we've got it figured out better than Mother Nature. One that I always like to bring into my classrooms is when we're growing crops, like say tomatoes in a controlled environment where we don't have natural pollinators and we have to actually bring the bees in, we're usually covering our greenhouse structures with something that

18:35
degradation of plastic coverings and things like that. But then, then we've like manipulated the vision patterns of these pollinators. So they can't pollinate quite as well in our controlled environment. It's like, you know, a kind of weird unintended consequence of blocking UV from our production space. So you're saying that bees have difficulty seeing when there's a lack of UV? Yeah.

19:05
They can see in the UV range, unlike us. And so there are, like say take a tomato flower, it's actually got like a target built into it. And the pollinators will be able to see that target that guides them right to the center of the flower to harvest the pollen. Wow. Okay. That's new. Another unintended consequence. Okay.

19:35
How light can interact with plants, how plants grow. Why do you think that's even an important thing we should be doing? I mean, we have big, big supermarket changes that make our food for us. Why do kids need to worry about that?

19:51
Well, I mean, from the standpoint of what got us into this project in the first place, the fact is we don't have enough people to grow that food right now. We have a dearth of folks who are interested in it, even aware of, right? Like even aware of horticulture as a career. And I'm obviously zeering at horticulture, but it's much broader than that in terms of

20:21
some of the traditional ag fields. And so, you know, we might have big supermarkets now with people, you know, populated with food that's coming from, you know, thousands of miles away and some local production too, right? Mixed in there and cool farmers markets and really great like, you know, partnerships between restaurants and small scale local farming and all of that is great.

20:51
But the people who are doing it aren't going to be able to do it forever. And we need to always be focused on the next generation and the innovations that will continue to come in agriculture. And that's also a part of our goal, which is to, even students who are familiar with where their food comes from and how to grow it and have family gardens and things like that, don't necessarily think of or are aware of the fact that

21:21
the level of technology and automation that is the future of agriculture and food production. And so we're trying to also help students see that there are careers in robotics and flying drones and engineering and computer programming and artificial intelligence that are all a part of the future of our food supply and many other things, of course.

21:51
But that we need students who have a passion for plants and technology to look at horticulture as a career. And so it's not just like, you know, sowing a seed like you did in second grade and then watering it in a windowsill. It's a lot more sophisticated than that. And the opportunities are really just endless in terms of what students are going to be

22:21
to do in the future in these future careers. So trying to just spread that message and spark that interest is the goal. Now, you touching on some of these jobs that are coming in the future, like can you kind of go into more specifics of some of these careers that these kids can pursue like this drone flying and things like that? Sounds amazing. Yeah. I mean, and it's still,

22:51
So in the research and development phase, but especially because we just don't have a large enough workforce to meet demand, there's a lot of focus on automating food production. And so that really ups the skillset and the skills that are needed for the people who are doing it. So as crop production becomes more automated, we need like systems engineers who can develop and operate software interfaces

23:21
between greenhouse environment and robots doing the planting, growing and harvesting. We're going to need drone operators who can not only fly the drones but interpret the data that they collect that will do things like help us efficiently manage pests because with drones we can get a very quick scan of discoloration and foliage, for example, that

23:51
in on where there's like a pocket of pest feeding. We need plant scientists who are gonna do things like breed miniature tomatoes that can be grown on tabletops in everyone's home. We need horticulturists who will figure out how to repurpose organic waste products into fertilizer. I was just talking with a colleague yesterday about using food waste and having organic fertilizer

24:21
from the food waste from their university cafeteria and how that could work as an organic fertilizer, which has a ton of challenges, but absolutely is something worth looking at as we need to move towards a more sustainable production environment. Water use is huge. And of course, that's an advantage of hydroponics. So the jobs of the future are not so much

24:51
harness technology to make crop production more environmentally friendly and efficient with less inputs. Always appreciating that not everything is going to be produced in a controlled environment. There's always going to be a place for traditional orchards and parking systems, but some crops do make sense in controlled environments.

25:21
You've come from sort of a heavy greenhouse background and Kansas has lots of land, lots of great soil. You could grow crops outdoors, but then there's this indoor component that's completely controlled without any natural sunlight. Where do you see the future of horticulture heading? Do you think it's a combination of all those or do you think it's going in one direction more than the other? Yeah. Well, without question,

25:51
combination of both. Indoor production provides huge benefits in things like water savings, for example. And there are some crops like lettuce, microgreens, you mentioned brassicas, that are perfect for indoor production, where we can precisely control the indoor environment and then optimize the quality and the speed with which the product is produced.

26:21
for the efficient electricity, right? Cause we're like using LEDs now, but we do have to pay for that energy that produces the photosynthesis, that drives the photosynthesis and that's plant growth. But in the case of those crops, we harvest and consume all of the photosynthetic output of that light energy. So we eat all of the foliage. So there's an inefficiency there in terms of what it costs

26:51
with what we get out of it. But with other crops, like, you know, take, you know, woody fruit trees, for example, you know, we have to use a lot of energy in the standpoint of light, from the standpoint of what we're paying for, that light energy to grow a lot of biomass, you know, woody stems and leaves that's never gonna be consumed. So you have a lot of light energy that's needed to drive the photosynthesis to produce a lot of biomass

27:21
And so the cost analysis really breaks down there in terms of, you know, whether or not it could make sense in a controlled environment to grow those crops. Now there is a lot of really cool research, you know, related to using other forms of energy, like, you know, like off the grid, like, you know, solar energy and wind energy, for example.

27:51
you know, source of energy for the electricity that, you know, fuels the LED lights. So I'm not saying it's a deal breaker indefinitely, but in the shorter term foreseeable future, there's definitely going to be, you know, a limited pallet of crops that are going to make sense to grow in controlled environments. And do you see, I know you do experiments with, you know, the coloration, but what about

28:21
flavonoid production. Have you seen anything with flavors increasing or decreasing under certain lights or in certain growth scenarios? Yeah, for sure. I actually have a colleague here at K-State who specifically looks at that and he's done, Shana Rajashekar, and he's done research in field production with

28:51
where the plants are a bit more stressed during their production, which often happens in the field, the stress response tends to produce those beneficial flavors. Laminate flavors, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So for sure. Okay. Yeah. And that's a huge plus of controlled environments in that if you are looking for a very specific

29:21
with the control that you have in controlled environment production in vertical farms and so forth. Yeah, that's amazing. That's like the future. I mean, isn't there like some fruits that are out there that are more sweet than others just because they were grown in this controlled environment under a certain lighting spectrum and certain humidity or CO2 levels? I mean, there's just so much to play with it seems like in these controlled environments and there's still so much to learn. So

29:51
and hear more about his current experiments and maybe share a link to what he's doing and find out more there too. I wanted to follow up with you about a book that you co-authored. Can you share with us a bit about the book? Yeah, so co-edited and I co-authored several chapters in it, but with some colleagues at UC Riverside,

30:21
Riverside and Rutgers University. So we sort of span the US. We called on our colleagues in controlled environment production and it's water, root media and nutrient management for greenhouse crops. So it's just really focused in on trying to consolidate all of the great knowledge and information that we have in a really grower friendly format, an extension or

30:51
that summarizes how to use soil-less substrates and the types of irrigation systems and fertilizer programs that we have in container production where we actually don't use any soil. We have soil-less substrates. And so, yeah, it was a long process to try to pull all of that information together, but we're really just to have the book out there and available through

31:21
of California, division of Ag and Natural Resources. It's like on Amazon and stuff. It's on Amazon. What's the name of the book again? Just so people can remember. Just so I keep looking down at it. Yeah, show it on the screen. Yeah, it's Water, Nutrient Management for Greenhouse Crops. Awesome. And so you work with UC Riverside Rutgers. I really appreciate that you're reaching outside of your university, K-State, and working with other universities,

31:51
and what's the latest trends. Like that's great, right? Because I mean, it seems like it's so great that you communicate and bring this stuff forward. And I'm happy that I think that there should be more spotlighting on this. So thank you for that and just collaboration and pushing this tech forward.

32:13
Yeah, I mean, there are amazing scientists out there that are not me, right? For sure. Like, like that it takes a team effort. None of us can do it all. And so really what makes sense is that we just keep learning from each other and standing on the shoulders of the giants that came before us. Right. Right. Exactly. So we'll get to the last few questions. You know, I appreciate you so much for your time. Do you have any advice for, you know, young people out there that maybe aren't in the program in Manhattan?

32:43
and they may be interested in starting to grow their own garden at home or like they're thinking of horticulture as a career. What do you say to that young person? Yeah, there are so many ways that you can have fun with plants and just get experience with plants just to dive in and do it. You can get at Walmart small little desktop hydroponic systems if you just want to play

33:13
your room, you know, a little desktop size with some LED lights and, you know, these really cool systems have taken, you know, a lot of the, the, the back behind the scenes stuff that you have to know, uh, out of the process so that it's just kind of very automated. And that's just a great place to start. Um, if you have any little plot of land, you can go to the dollar store and get, um, you know, a pack of seeds for 25 cents and, and, you know, start growing.

33:43
squash and tomatoes and cucumbers. So if you have, oh, foliage plants, right? Like, oh my gosh, how fun is that? And I mean, I think that what I've said in the last few years is the only good thing about the pandemic was that it reintroduced gardening and foliage plants to so many folks

34:13
slipped off of the radar and sort of out of our culture. But when folks had that time, again, they sort of plants were rediscovered and the value that they bring to our environment. So we've been focused a lot on crops that we eat, but ornamental plants and, you know, how when we when we bring them into our interior plant spaces in our built environments, the ornamental aspect of that

34:43
just feel better. There's always exciting to see research where, you know, shorter hospital stays are measured when plants are in the room or when you have green walls in a teaching and learning space, students perform a little better on tests. And so, you know, just get a foliage plant cutting from your grandma's pothos and, you know, we cut on the plants,

35:13
Don't be frustrated if something dies. That's all a part of the learning process. We all probably learn a little bit more from what doesn't work than from what does work perfectly. So if you have an interest in plants, dive in. And so many of our land grant universities like Kansas State have these outreach and extension-based resources that are designed to help you succeed.

35:43
convince your folks to let you dig up a little corner of a garden or like a patio planter and you know get some tomatoes growing for the summer that you can then make some like homemade salsa with and you can draw on these resources that are available. So for example at K-State we have a garden hour which is designed to just you know answer

36:13
any question that you have about how to start your own garden. And just tons of freely downloadable resources. So if you look to a university and look for like, you know, horticulture, gardening, Google that and look for university based resources, you can be assured that they're based on research and they're recommending cultivars that are going to do well in your location and things like that. So, oh, my gosh, I could go on and on.

36:43
And what about good books? You have a lot of books behind you. I do. I'm an old timer, right? I do. I kind of came through my education where building libraries was important. But honestly, there are great books, but Googling is also fantastic. And knowing where to look, right? That's why I keep mentioning, if you find extension or

37:13
confidence in it and that's not to say that there's not a lot of great information otherwise but when you're just learning where to start got it got to give a plug to our university extension system.

37:28
Well, Dr. Kimberly, I really appreciate you speaking with us today. Any other final words of wisdom or thoughts before I let you go? Oh, gosh. No. No, it's super fun to meet you, Taylor. And, you know, it's just it's great to see what you're doing with the with the LED lights and, you know, you know, just different. There's just an endless array of of ways that they can be used.

37:58
them in the back of high school classrooms is just one of them. So it's really great. I want to help you with that. Let me know anything you need. I'm here to support you in educating these kids. So thank you so much, doctor. And we wish you all the best and until next time. Thank you. You too. Appreciate it. Bye. Bye.