Dr. Bala Rathinasabapathi, known to most as Dr. Saba, is developing agricultural solutions to produce better peppers for Florida while also leading the next generation of plant scientists. As an advisor and professor in the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences department of horticultural sciences, Saba is responsible for both teaching and research. His dedication to excellence is reflected in his several teaching and advising awards, including, most recently, being selected as the outstanding graduate educator by the American Society for Horticultural Science.
Saba’s studies took him around the world. He began his academic journey by earning his bachelor’s degree in agriculture at Annamalai University in Tamil Nadu, India. He then went on to earn his master’s degree in genetics from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi, India, and later his doctoral degree in biology from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. . He worked as a postdoctoral research associate at Michigan State University, East Lansing and the Universite de Montreal, Montreal prior to joining the University of Florida. Now, as a faculty member at the University of Florida, Saba and his students are on a quest to build better peppers in their facilities in Fifield Hall and the Fifield Teaching Farm and Garden in Gainesville, Florida.
Saba leads the building better peppers project where he and his students work to improve pepper genetics to create varieties with higher nutritional content, better flavor and more attractive appearance. This student-centered project gives students in his class hands-on experience with plant breeding. Everything students do in the course is documented in their names to ensure they receive credit for any successful new pepper varieties and scholarly contributions.
This project is exclusively cross-breeding and does not include any genetic modification. Cross-pollinating different types of peppers leads to new plant material with a new combination of characteristics. Via careful selection, new varieties are derived and they are useful for both growers and consumers.
“Our goal is to find a combination to get new varieties,” Saba said. “I just tell students, it’s like playing with LEGOs because you can take different colored LEGOs and then make something new. We are doing the same thing in plant breeding except that we are collecting different traits and then mixing them together to create a new variety.”
In his class, students learn about how to make controlled crosses between chosen plants and have to research what traits could be combined to build a better pepper. They learn about how the traits are inherited, about dominant and recessive traits, the genes involved in controlling different traits and whether genes are linked or if they are on separate chromosomes. Some of the traits students focus on in his course include nutritional value, flavor and appearance.
Especially for consumers, appearance plays a significant role in pepper breeding. Students are challenged with producing ideas for improving peppers, and luckily, students are strategically positioned to look at the situation through the lens of a consumer. Through Dr. Saba’s innovative teaching, students learn by doing. They are provided with the necessary background knowledge, trained on how to make crosses between plants, and the opportunity to see their project come to fruition.
Students in Saba’s class are typically limited to the time span of a semester to complete their projects. Students cross-breed the peppers by dissecting the flower bud before the bud opens and removing the male parts of the flower. Next, students bring pollen from a different plant and pollinate the flower on the following day. The flower then needs to be covered with a bag so nature’s pollinators, bees and butterflies do not come and pollinate that same flower with different pollen.
“What we are really good at is the science part,” Saba said. “We may be able to discover new things that nobody discovered.”
Not only are Saba and his students developing seeds that could be marketed as future technologies for farmers to ensure the livelihood of Florida’s pepper industry, but Saba is devoting his career to future plant scientists who will continue his life’s work for generations to come.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Olivia Doyle is a student at the University of Florida graduating with her master’s degree in agricultural communication. She worked as a graduate assistant for the UF/IFAS College of Agricultural and Life Sciences Dean's Office and a communication assistant for the UF/IFAS Center for Aquatic and Invasive Plants.
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Olivia Doyle