You can watch Lian discuss her internship experience here on YouTube, and you can view our entire Internship Experience playlist here on YouTube!
In the fall of 2024, Lian Durón Alvarado traveled from West Lafayette, Indiana to Watsonville, California, for her SCRI: PIP-CAP Academia-Industry Student Exchange opportunity. She spent a week learning and working at Driscoll’s, a global leader in all things berry related. “Here in Indiana, it’s like the land of the corn,” she explained. “So I fell in love with the landscape on the West Coast.”
Lian is the seventh student on the SCRI: PIP-CAP team to intern with a leading industry partner. SCRI: PIP-CAP stands for Specialty Crop Research Initiative – Coordinated Agricultural Project and it is a USDA-funded exploration into creating indoor propagation protocols for various strawberry cultivars. Our research focuses on how the process of growing strawberries indoors can and should improve in order to get better strawberries.
Currently a Masters student pursuing a degree in Horticulture Science at Purdue University in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Lian is studying controlled environment agriculture (CEA) under Dr. Celina Gómez. Her research focuses on indoor propagation and cold storage of strawberry rooted and unrooted tips, evaluating the effects of temperature and light intensity on growth and subsequent yield of strawberry plants. She is a part of the project’s second objective, researching the development of environmental protocols for transplant establishment, conditioning and long-term storage. (Read more about our project objectives here.)
“I went to Driscoll’s company, a global market leader in berries,” said Lian. Being at Driscoll’s provided her with the opportunity to gain practical insight and experience of the berry industry in real time. Since all of her previous experiences have been in academia as a student and researcher, interning with an industry partner helped her gain a new perspective, one as an industry researcher & developer. She had the opportunity to collaborate with the leaders of the plant pathology team, which she says was a new and exciting learning experience for her.
“I gained experience on a couple of things during the week, including resistant assays, molecular cleanstock, nursery plant health, and inoculations in strawberries,” Lian said.
Lian was also fortunate to be able to visit Corralitos Nursery, a tabletop nursery and breeding greenhouse. She says that the entire week-long experience stretched her brain, expanding her knowledge of commercial strawberry production, and that her understanding of the challenges faced by the industry has deepened.
This internship opportunity was perfect for Lian, who said, “My goal is to work in the industry, ideally in the R&D department because I simply love doing research. And I’m eager to gain more hands-on experience and address real world challenges in the industry. But eventually I also aim to return to grad school for a PhD, and this with the intention of bringing my industry experience back into academia to address new research questions and contribute to scientific advancements.”
“I’m really grateful [for] the people I met at Driscoll’s. They are amazing people and they helped me to have a great experience there,” Lian said.
Written by Alexa Artis and Lian Durón Alvarado