A Day in the Field
This past Sunday marked my 3rd week here in Beijing, China — which is a reminder to me of just how quickly time is passing. It still feels as if yesterday I was finalizing my packing and making my cheat sheet with all my flight and gate numbers on it. I can truly say time flies when you are having fun. I love all the work I am doing here from running gels to sowing seeds — the hours feel like minutes.
In addition to my love for science, I have found something else here that drives me to wake up in the mornings, work late into the nights, never feeling as if I am working: the people. Everyday I am surrounded by fervent students and teachers who have dedicated so much of their time to their passion: crop science. They have taught me a myriad of things ranging from how to isolate a plasmid to how to make the best tea. However, the most important thing they have taught me is passion. As one of my lab-mates from India, Suyash, explained to me when I asked him why he was going back to the lab at 11:00 at night, “…love is a requirement for this research. Nobody here doesn’t love what they are researching. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be doing a PhD.” This brief conversation I had with Suyash taught me so much about life and passion. The few short weeks I have been here have highlighted the significance of Suyash’s quote. I have yet to meet someone here who is not hard working and passionate. This gathering of thousands of passionate and intelligent people is what creates such a unique academy where so much groundbreaking research happens.
Anyways, the first time I observed the impressive work ethic and true passion my peers have for their specific fields was — appropriately — at the fields. Earlier this week, my lab mates and I woke up around 6 in the morning to take a bus to the rice fields in rural Beijing. When we arrived at the fields, it was rainy and overcast, which I thought was bad weather until later in the day when it became sunny and 95º — at that point I was missing the beautiful weather I was so happily greeted with in the morning.
Our work at the fields consisted of transporting and transplanting our transgenic (plants with foreign DNA) rice plants from the lab and green house to a specific plot of land. This is because, ultimately, plants can only grow to a certain size in the lab until they demand both the nutrients and space that only a field can offer.
At the fields, we used a small electric bike to transport 30 trays, each containing 20 plants, 1 mile from the green house to the plot of land. However, the one electric bike we had, sadly, ran out of battery and my lab-mates and I had the herculean task of walking the last 15 trays to the fields. After we transported the first round of trays I was exhausted — to say the least. I was wearing long pants and heavy boots meant for snow — it was quite obvious this was my first time. Every time I looked at my lab-mates I realized they were smiling through both the heat and the hard work.
When we finally transported all the plants it was time to plant them. Planting rice requires you to walk through water that is more than 1 foot high while trudging through mud that sticks to your shoes and makes it nearly impossible to walk through — or for me at least. Walking across the field — which is approximately 50 feet — took 20 minutes for me. I fell about 5 times and my lab-mates could not stop laughing. Thankfully, they made sure to take as many photos as possible.
The lab I am interning at in the Institute of Crop Sciences at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) focuses on better defining the mechanisms behind important rice traits to, ultimately, help farmers choose desirable traits that will increase yields and combat food insecurity globally. For example, my experiment involves studying the variations in mesocotyl length (the tissue that connects the seed to the base of the coleoptile) in 600 different rice germplasms to identify a significant correlation between specific nucleotide sequences and mesocotyl length. This experiment has substantial significance because mesocotyl elongation is crucial for deep sowed seedlings to survive.
Billions of people rely heavily on rice and with a growing world population there is an increasingly dire need for higher production. The research I am conducting and observing here at CAAS has more importance than I can comprehend. Significant scientific breakthroughs are being made here daily and are changing the world for the better. I cannot stress enough how grateful I am to be given this amazing opportunity to conduct such novel research at the age of 16. I would like to again thank the World Food Prize Foundation and the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences for sponsoring a teenage student to live halfway around the world and learn science from some of the world’s leading experts.
