Hello everyone, I am Jyostna Mura. I recently joined as a USDA-ARS Cranberry Physiologist with the Dept. of Horticulture, UW-Madison. I am excited to have this opportunity. My role is to improve cranberry productivity and quality by exploring the fundamental mechanisms underlying the physiological responses of cranberry to water, nutrients, and environmental factors.

As a child, watching my family in India growing different crops gave me a passion for understanding crop growth and led me to pursue a career in agricultural research. I completed a Ph.D. in Genetics and Physiology with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics, a research center under the UN’s Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. While pursuing my Ph.D., I was awarded a fellowship from the US Agency for International Development to conduct research at the University of Florida. After finishing my Ph.D., I worked with the University of Florida, North Carolina State University, several international organizations, and the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Maryland. Throughout my research career, I have worked on a variety of crops, including corn, cotton, soybean, peanut, chickpea, common beans, cocoa, and goji berries. I really enjoy working with different crops and farmer groups.

I am a plant physiologist by training, with expertise in the fields of molecular biology and plant biochemistry. My research experience includes studying plant physiological traits and mechanisms that contribute to crop growth and yield. Some of the mechanisms that I have studied are water conservation, nutrient use efficiency, hormonal role, carbon partitioning, and sugar metabolism in fruits. I focused on identifying variability in these traits among different cultivars. This information has been used in breeding efforts to improve crop yields and to produce new soybean and peanut varieties that can use water and nutrients more efficiently.

Cranberry is a unique crop, and I want to bring my expertise in many cropping systems to understand cranberry physiological mechanisms. My goal is to focus on the traits that are relevant and important to the cranberry industry to efficiently grow the best quality, and highest yielding cranberries. I want to apply basic plant physiology principles to study mechanisms related to water conservation, nutrient management, and hormonal effects, along with monitoring the performance of different cranberry varieties. I am also planning to use my experience in plant stress physiology to understand the influence of environmental stress factors on cranberry growth, development, and productivity.

I am eager to visit cranberry bogs as soon as social distancing restrictions allow it. Working from home, for now, I am reviewing current cranberry issues and communicating with the other cranberry research groups to get a sense of ongoing cranberry research priorities. I hope together as a team; we can advance cranberry research and promote our community.

I look forward to working with you and hope to meet you all in person soon. In the meantime, you are always welcome to contact me by email (jyostna.mura@usda.gov/ jmura@wisc.edu) or phone (6082654745).

This article was posted in Cranberry and tagged CCMJ, Cranberries, cranberry physiology.