NEWS

CROP SCIENCE

Student's Research Improves the Turfgrass Industry

Shujie Dong was admitted as a Ph. D student to Dr. Rongda Qu’s lab in the Crop Science Department at NC State University in 2001. She received her Ph.D. degree, majoring in Crop Science and minoring in Plant Pathology, on May 13, 2006.

Her dissertation title is “Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea Schreb.) for fungal disease resistance” During her Ph.D. study, Shujie developed an efficient Agrobacterium-mediated transformation system for genetic transformation of tall fescue, a popular lawn turfgrass in North Carolina, and introduced four disease resistant genes into tall fescue. Some of her transgenic plants showed very good resistance to the brown patch (Rhizoctonia solani) and/or gray leaf spot (Magnaporthe grisea) diseases, two severe fungal diseases for turfgrass lawn here. She filed 4 NCSU invention disclosures and the NCSU Technology Transfer Office is promoting her new technology (http://www.ncsu.edu/ott/techsheets/05.114.pdf). Her achievements have the potentials to make future turfgrasses, and possibly other crops, more fungal disease resistant, decrease the applications of fungicides, and thus reduce the costs and environmental pollution.

Because of her outstanding academic achievements and contribution to the turfgrass industry, she won the 2006 Eagle Award from the Turfgrass Council of North Carolina. In addition, she won the Second Place of poster contest in the International Research Exposition at NC State University in 2005, was recommended to participate in the Annual Graduate Student Professional Development Workshop for the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at North Carolina State University (2004), and won a travel award for Graduate Students from the North Carolina Plant Molecular Biology Consortium (2003). Shujie was also admitted as a member to the Gamma Sigma Delta Honor Society.

Shujie is married to Zhengyu Yang, also a Ph.D. student in the Crop Science Department, and gave birth to their son, Andrew, last December.