2: Biofortified Crops and Natural Rubber w/ Dr. Catherine Simpson

Our second guest on the Deep Roots Podcast is Catherine Simpson, Ph.D. Simpson is an Associate Professor of Urban Horticulture and Sustainability. Simpson’s research is driven by a strong sense of curiosity and fascination with plants, as well as her love for the environment which has guided her research throughout her career. 

She has conducted impactful research with the National Science Foundation’s Engineering Research Center (ERC) on the Transformation of American Rubber through Domestic Innovation for Supply Security (TARDISS). Her work focuses on evaluating guayule lines for the High Plains and advancing domestic alternatives for natural latex and rubber.  

During this episode, she explains the importance of natural latex and rubber, and how it makes an impact in our everyday lives. Simpson’s research passions also lie within biofortification, which consists of external applications of vitamins, such as increasing vitamin C in vegetables like lettuce.  

Simpson credits her students as a source of motivation. Their fresh perspectives, passion, and curiosity continue to inspire her and have even led her to explore new research directions she may not have pursued independently. Collaboration is also a vital part of her research, as meaningful feedback, ideas, and connections across the department, college, and university are all parts of great research. 

To wrap up the episode, Simpson discusses her challenges, which are often looked at as opportunities to expand as a researcher, as well as the biggest takeaway she hopes individuals will learn from her research.  

Let us know your thoughts on Dr. Simpson’s research, reach out to her for more information, and be sure to subscribe to Deep Roots!  

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, and welcome to today's episode of the Deep Roots Podcast, a production of the Davis College of Agricultural Science and Natural Resources here at Texas Tech University. I'm glad you joined us today as we take a deeper dive into the world of agriculture and the amazing people who are innovating and researching and making ag better. Today I sat down with Dr. Catherine Simpson, an associate professor of sustainable and urban horticulture in the Department of Plant and Soil Science. We talked about everything from her work in sustainable and natural rubber sources like Guayule to controlled environment agriculture and the implications it may have on food supply and nutrition and health. Dr. Simpson is a passionate teacher and really dedicated to one making her community better and making the world better, but also improving the lives of her students. So thanks again for joining us, and I hope you enjoy this conversation with Dr. Catherine Simpson. Catherine, thanks for coming in and being on today. It's exciting to get to hear a little bit more about your research, about you and what you do. And I know our listeners are super excited to hear from you. So thanks for being here. And just to start us off, why don't you introduce yourself, tell us about what you do at Texas Tech, what your position is, and for the uninitiated, what that means.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

All right. Well, my name is Catherine Simpson. I'm an associate professor of urban horticulture and sustainability. And that basically means I do a little bit of everything. Urban horticulture and sustainability are very broad topics, and I don't like to be defined by certain things. So I tend to do the research that interests me and follow my heart and my passions and try to incorporate that in my love for the environment and plants into all that I do.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

That's good. And it's nice that you can do that. I think as faculty, I think sometimes and as researchers, it's easy to get, I don't know, pigeonholed into a certain like this is what you do, this is your thing. And it makes sense to a certain extent and we spend all this time studying a topic, but then I think we get into this because we enjoy learning.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Yeah, and I think that's what I love about this position and what I do is I always learn and I'm always learning new things. And everything horticulture is fascinating to me. So if it has to do with plants or plant physiology and things like that, less academic freedom is about exploring topics that interest us and all that.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Yeah, and that's a great segue into I guess what does interest you. So you do I personally know that you do more than any three people, probably at like most places. But you research a lot of things and a lot of interesting stuff. So can you talk a little bit about your research and what you look into here as part of your position?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

Well, again, I have a broad range of research projects right now, but I'll talk about the top two or three that I've been doing. But currently I have a research project on biofortification, which is the agronomic biofortification of plants using things like external application of vitamins to increase vitamin C in things like lettuce. So it's a lot easier than trying to genetically transform or enhance through breeding or genetic modification. We just do external applications in different ways and different concentrations to try to increase the nutritional composition of the plants. And I'm really passionate about that. I think that's some of the most interesting research and findings that we've had recently. I'm also doing research on Wayule and alternative latex and rubber crops. We've got Wayule, which is a desert plant. It's native to the Chihuahuan Desert. It's been grown on and off throughout the US for about a hundred years. Oh, wow. And it would provide a domestic source of natural rubber and latex. And one of the reasons why we need this is because we only get latex and rubber from, or natural latex and rubber, from the Haveea tree, which is the rubber tree. And that's only grown in Southeast Asia or South Asia. Oh, okay. Um and we can't grow it here. We've tried in Hawaii, we've tried other places, but it does not grow. In South America, it also grows. But the Wayule plant produces the type of rubber and latex that we need. We've actually, I know that Goodyear and Bridgestone have made tires from Guyule rubber.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

That's super cool. Well, anyway, we're talking about the Chihuahuan Desert and here at Texas Tech and Lubbock, we're not the desert, but we're like desert adjacent, right? We're almost in a lot of ways we operate under some of the same constraints. So is water a big part of why you're looking into this? Is that a big driving factor behind this alternative crop?

SPEAKER_01 5:11

That's one of the reasons, yes. Because with a desert plant, you're going to have less water demands, or we hope that the irrigation requirements are going to be lower. And we know that in Arizona, they're operating with lower water requirements than they are for other crops. So things that take a lot of water out of our water system here, we might be able to replace or partially replace that land or the production with a crop that has lower water demands.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

Okay. Well, and it's another, I guess, area for production, right? When we think about fiber being king in this part of the world, which we grow a lot of cotton.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Yeah. Well, and it's diversification too, because with the rising cotton costs of cotton production, you want to be able to have other crops that might bring in more money to supplement. And we wouldn't want to produce, and we don't have the infrastructure yet to produce on the all of the cotton acreage that we have. But in order to supplement, we're hoping that we could have like a cash crop to supplement with higher profits in some of the land that maybe people would want to take out of production for other crops.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

It's really interesting. And so you've kind of mentioned a couple of sectors that you work in, right? You have environmental health with the water and natural sources of rubber and things like that. You've talked a little bit about physical human health through biofortification, but you also work a little bit in the mental health effects of plants. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Yes. Yeah. I've had several students and I have done some research on people-plant interactions for lack of a better phrase. But yes, we've done some research. Dr. Thomas has done research with me, and we've explored the benefits of therapeutic horticulture on veterans and their mental health. And Jonah Trevino has been doing research on not only community gardens and signage, but also his master's, he was working on nature benefits during COVID.

SPEAKER_00 7:22

That's really cool. And I mean, I think this is this question may be almost silly to ask because of the breadth of what you do. But a big part of our research and a big thing we try to measure and figure out is impact. How are we having an impact? What are we actually doing? So how do you see the work that you do impacting not just our students and the body of knowledge and our, I don't know, literary backing for science, but just the community in general? How does this all help people?

SPEAKER_01 7:55

I think it's difficult to quantify because some of the impacts of our research we're not going to find for a long time. Because it's the start. Like for students, for example, my students, I hope that they're individually getting a lot out of the skills and the education that they have here. And then they're going to go out and they're going to be part of the workforce that impacts society. But that's just one small part. I think with things like biofortification, we can have real impacts on nutritional status of crops and having real tangible ways of increasing things like vitamin C in crops in a method that's accessible to many farmers, but doesn't cost a lot more in their production. But hopefully that margin, that profit margin is going to be higher. With the latex and the rubber crops, we're going more for latex because it has a higher profit margin for production compared to Haveia or to rubber, rather. And if we compare rubber production with Wayule or Haveia trees, it's always going to be cheaper just because the labor is so inexpensive in the countries in which it is produced. But if we go for something like latex, we can get some of that higher profit margin off of our products. So things like gloves or tracheole tubes or anything else. And the reason why it would be impactful is because Wayule doesn't contain the protein that causes the latex allergies that Haveea does. And so we don't have Wayule latex allergies at the moment. And that is huge because a significant portion of the population has some degree of latex allergy, especially if you have medical problems or exposure, because they've said that they've seen in doctors and nurses and people that are in the hospital regularly have developed more latex allergies because of exposure. So not having that would be great. I mean, think of our medical industry and everything that we have there.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Well, and already we're having to find different, I guess, products to make for people with those allergies. But if we had something that anyone can use, like that's great. Accessibility is it really goes up with stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Yeah. And the thing is, natural rubber and natural latex contain product contain properties that the synthetics don't. So with rubber tires, for example, airplane tires have to be, I want to say about 100%, if not almost 100%, natural rubber, because if they try to use synthetics, they will explode upon impact. Oh. And natural rubber is the only thing that will have the capacity to prevent that from happening. So that's one of the reasons why airplane tires are exclusively made of natural rubber.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

That's fascinating to me.

SPEAKER_01 11:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

And yeah, you don't want your airplane tires exploding. That's less less than ideal.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

Yeah. Well, and natural rubber makes up a lot of our regular car tires too. So with that, it helps with the longevity and the I think the traction and things. I other people can answer that better than me, but I'm not a tire person. But the the impact could be extensive because if we have a source here, we don't have to worry about like the greenhouse gas emissions or carbon footprint of importing from other countries. And in times of war, we've seen significant uptick of investment in Wayule production in the US because we want a natural source. We want we don't want to depend on other sources when we can grow something that can provide benefits here.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Yeah, that's really interesting. So you mentioned you're not a tire person or an engineer or a physicist or the things that I just go into making sure airplanes don't explode or tires don't explode. But that kind of I think means to me that you have to collaborate, that there are a number of partners across disciplines, both inside and outside the university, that our research is a piece in that puzzle, or your research is a piece of that puzzle. So can you take talk a little bit about some of the collaborations you work through, both again inside Texas Tech and then nationally and internationally?

SPEAKER_01 13:09

Yeah. Well, I think collaboration is a huge component in research because we can't know everything. And we depend on others not only for their expertise, but also their impact in order to improve research as a whole. So being able to talk to other people, get ideas, get feedback, and just improve and improve as we go is important. And some of the collaborations I have here are in engineering. I work with the Texas Produced Water Consortium. And a lot of the engineers that we have there, we do research projects on alternative water sources like desalinated polished produced water and how that impacts plant growth and production. But we're also looking into how that impacts the environment. So I've got collaborators in NRM, I've got collaborators in engineering and chemistry and all those things. I also have collaborators at other universities. The Waiule Latex and Rubber grant that I've got called TARDIS. We're working with a great name. Yes. We're working with engineers and scientists all across the spectrum. So with Ohio State University, they're the lead institution on this. We are also working with Caltech, UC Merced, North Carolina State University, Case Western, and a few others. And their research and their expertise spans all disciplines. So we've got people that are doing social scientists, we've got social scientists doing research on engineering workforce development. And they are looking into how neurodiverse people can be included in training and gaining experience to work in these positions that we're going to have if Wailia and Rubber Dandelion are widely grown crops.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

That's really cool. It lets you reach into other fields and reach into other places that may not have been accessible to us as plant researchers in the past. That's, I don't know, a way to say that. Almost a force multiplier, right? We can take the work we do and get it into more people's lives. And I think that's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 15:44

Oh yeah, because the opportunities that we have if we work with others is exponential because I, as a plant scientist, I could grow the plants, but I wouldn't be able to develop a new type of medical glove or tracheal tube or other medical equipment. And working with engineers and getting a lot of that viewpoint is really eye-opening because it it's just so much that we are able to do because we work together.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Well, and that I that's interesting. And I think that thinking about all of these things, a lot of moving parts, it's complicated. What challenges have you faced in developing these programs? Because I one thing that I see is that as we're talking about pursuing our interests and pursuing our passions, we have to figure out the how, right? How do the nuts and bolts of that work? And there are some differences between doing one thing and doing a lot of things. And so what challenges have you faced in the development of your research programs?

SPEAKER_01 16:54

Well, first, I just like to say that challenges and issues and mistakes are all part of the research process. And that actually helps us perform research better. And it improves our skills and our flexibility and our ability to troubleshoot because half the time I learn more from making a mistake or doing something wrong and then figuring out how to make it right than I do if I did everything perfectly from the beginning. And we shouldn't be afraid of making mistakes in research. Now we try not to make horrible mistakes. Right. I don't want to burn down the greenhouse. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:44

Most of the time, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:46

But sometimes the things we learn are by accident, like with ethylene was discovered by accident as a plant hormone. And sometimes those bring up the questions that we need to answer in the future. And we all have challenges. A lot of the moving parts are a huge issue, is because there are things that we've got to do all the time and to put into it. And there's a lot of things that we juggle with teaching and with research and with student mentoring and training and all of the departmental requirements that we have. And I make a lot of lists.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

And I think an integral part of list making is looking at the list. I'm working on it.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

I have to keep it in its own special notebook.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Yeah, that's smart. I like that. You mentioned earlier that you're very much at the beginning of some of these projects. That it's novel research in a lot of ways or relatively unexplored. And so we're doing a lot of exploratory things and trying to set the basis for the future. So in your mind, what does that future look like? Where are you headed with your research, or where would you like to head? And what things are you excited about that are on the horizon?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

Well, I mean, there's a lot that I would like to see happen. One thing that I think is essential that we get in place is infrastructure. So infrastructure for latex and rubber extraction for Wayule and rubber dandelion. I think that is really important, forming partnerships with growers to start dabbling in this production of a new crop that we've seen kind of here and there, but maybe not consistently, or maybe not from this generation of farmers. And so I'd like to expand the acreage and expand the infrastructure to where we, whenever we do grow it on a larger scale, we're able to process it and move it from here and also ultimately create a lot of jobs in this region and be able to maybe do something like co-locating our extraction facilities with cotton gins, where in the offset off season we could have the seasonal workers work all around the year and have something to do even whenever the ginning season is over.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

That is such a cool idea. Because when we think about sustainable production and what that means, I think all of those different elements, the economic side, the environmental side, and the social side, where we're trying to take care of our people and make sure they have jobs and make sure they're well cared for, that's that hits so many of those high points. I think that's really cool.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Yeah, and I think there's so much potential with projects like this because YULA can't be grown everywhere. And this is one of the reasons regions where it can be grown. And being able to improve our economy and improve the job opportunities for people in our region that will likely impact Texas Tech and our graduates, I think would be, you know, such a great opportunity.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Very cool. Well, I appreciate your time and I appreciate your insight into all of this. And as we wrap up here, I'm curious what you would like people to take away with them. Because you cover a lot of ground. And this is a hard question to answer, in all honesty. Uh it always is for me. But as folks are listening to this and trying to contextualize what you do and contextualize your knowledge and your wisdom in this, what piece of information do you really hope people take home with them?

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Well, I hope that people start, and if not already, thinking about plants and how plants affect us in our daily lives. Because from food to fiber, we're constantly exposed to plants. And, you know, we we eat them every day. The nutritional status of our plants impacts our lives and our quality of life. And from agronomic crops that Essential for our diet to horticultural crops that improve our quality of life and our food options. I think that's it's really important that we take time out and see how being around plants and being knowledgeable of how these plants affect us every day and what we eat, what we are housed in, our clothes, all of these things. And I'm rambling, but yeah. But the impact is there. And even if it's just taking a walk in the park, it's been shown to improve mental health. And being around nature is how we're going to ground ourselves and hopefully impact future generations.

SPEAKER_00 22:52

That's awesome. I agree. Yeah, I think that's great. So, Catherine, that was wonderful. I really appreciate it. If people want to learn more about you and your lab and your work, where can they find you?

SPEAKER_01 23:02

I have a website. If you Google TTU Urban Horticulture and Sustainability Lab, that will bring you onto my lab page. And my email is just Catherine.simpson at TTU.edu. So feel free to reach out.

SPEAKER_00 23:19

Awesome. Well, thanks so much. It was a pleasure talking to you.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Oh great talking to you too.