Your Fellow APs

Interview with APA member Audrey Sebolt
Research Technician: Cherry Breeding & Genetics  |  Department of Horticulture

How long have you been at MSU?
I’ve been on the third floor of the Plant and Soil Sciences Building at Michigan State University since 1993.  I transferred from Aquinas College (Grand Rapids, MI) to MSU to complete my bachelors degree and then continued on with my masters, working for the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences throughout both my degree programs.  I’ve been working for my current boss, Dr. Amy Iezzoni, since 1999 in the Department of Horticulture for the Cherry Breeding and Genetics Lab.

Have you been a member of APA the whole time?
I was a member of the CT union and then became an APA member in 1999 when I started working with my current boss.

Can you tell me a little bit about what you do?
Since 2009, I have not just been a research technician, but also a half-time project assistant for RosBREED.  RosBREED is funded by the USDA Specialty Crop Research Initiative. RosBREED’s aim is to improve the fruit quality of apple, strawberry, peach, sweet cherry, and tart cherry and the project is a multi-national, multi-institutional program.  Our budget is 14 million dollars (federal and matching funds) and the project director is my boss, Dr. Amy Iezzoni. RosBREED is a collaborative project that involves more than 30 professors and 15 graduate students located throughout the United States and in six different countries.  My role is to communicate, collaborate, develop content and organize conferences with and for our participants.  I feel very fortunate to be their project assistant and have enjoyed this experience; our research community is a great group to work with and our motto is “RosBREED never sleeps” because we have someone in almost every time zone in the world working on the project and getting things done.

When I’m not working for RosBREED, I spend my time working for the Michigan State University cherry breeding and genetics program, whose mission is to develop new and improved tart cherry varieties that are disease resistant, have improved fruit quality and will be more profitable to the Michigan cherry industry.  Do you know that Michigan grows approximately 75% of the U.S. tart cherries?  I spend the summers in the field and the winters in the lab running DNA diagnostics, virus testing, however, my most of my “lab” work now involves me sitting at a computer.  Most of our DNA marker data has been generated by a core facility.  We were able to generate more than 5 million data points in one week due to the efforts of RosBREED, so data is still being quality checked and analyzed. We are finally beginning to catch up to where soybean and corn genetic research is at, but we have a long way to go!

What brought you to MSU?
I grew up and worked on a fruit farm in Oceana County, MI.  I had originally enrolled in the MSU engineering program, and though I enjoyed my classes, I just couldn’t see myself as an engineer and wanted to go back to my agricultural roots – so I walked over to the Plant and Soil Science building and immediately felt like I was “home”. I love what I do and feel it’s vital to Michigan and the world.  People need roads but I hope they are eating dried tart cherries on their way to work!

What do you love about working at MSU?
The best thing about working at MSU is that my job is never the same from day to day.  I love my job and have a wonderful boss and work for a strong department and University.  I appreciate their support and the strength of the APA union.  Because of the APA Union, I feel I have a good health care package and retirement, considering the economy.  The University is also a leader in agricultural research and I take pride in that as well as our beautiful campus – and who doesn’t love the Dairy Store?

What are the challenges of your position on campus?
Our summer field research is not conducted on campus and therefore, a typical day in the field for me is very intense.  Our research plots are located 50 miles west of campus at the MSU Clarksville Horticultural Research Station, located in Clarksville, MI. Because our research is off campus, we have to be extremely organized with our supplies and time management. We carry clipboards with to-do lists such as – weed this plot, take flower counts for our rootstock project (we are testing new rootstocks that we developed for sweet cherry), evaluate the crosses we made in the spring to see if we need to harvest the fruit, etc.  It can be pretty intense because we have to be extremely productive – if we don’t finish our to-do list, we are not able to just walk down the hall to finish the job.

Another challenge can be the long hours.  Because I work in agriculture, the spring and summer days can be stressful. For example, during bloom time (end of April/early May) we conduct our crosses and if it gets really hot, the flowers open at a faster rate and therefore I have to work seven days a week for several days straight, up to 9 hours per day.  In June and July our fruit begin to ripen and we have to start the harvest season.  During harvest, we load the van with coolers, head to Clarksville, harvest until at about 3pm so that we can drive back to main campus, unload our coolers and then start taking our data measurements on the fruit. During peak fruit harvest, I’m working 60+ hours a week because the fruit will not hold on the trees – you have to harvest and then quickly evaluate the fruit or it will rot.  Our data measurements on campus can get very tedious and monotonous.  We record data for fruit and pit weight and shape as well as fruit firmness, color, sugars, and acidity.  We end up generating millions of data points.  It’s a lot of data which we then enter into a computer in August and quality check.  Once the fruit data is “good to go”, we are then able to merge this data with our marker data I mentioned earlier to analyze and see if there are any markers that are correlated to our field data. I then help develop posters, presentations, reports and journal articles to present our results.

What do you like to do when you are not at work?
I enjoy gardening, cooking, jogging, traveling, and reading. I have a husband, seven-year-old son and four-year-old daughter and we love to play sports together – baseball, basketball and soccer.  My family and I also love nature and we enjoy hiking and biking. I am my son’s cub scout leader – for 14 second grade boys.