Introduction

Wei-Kuang (Jerry) Lin

                                                                                             Pollination

About me

My interest in Biology was developed since I visited my grandparents’ house in childhood. Both my grandparents love gardening and nature. In my grandparents’ backyard— orchids would be in full bloom in Chinese New Year; the jasmine would produce pleasant fragrance in late spring; and mango fruits could be harvested in midsummer. Observing the life cycles from seeds to flowers always brings me joyfulness. In this 'Oasis' backyard, among the concrete jungle at Taipei city, my grandparents ignited my appreciation and curiosity about the nature of life.


In my spare time, I grow plants, such as orchids, carnivorous plant, Streptocarpus, Sinningia, Columnea, and Tillandsia. 

Kitchen window at my house in Taiwan during the spring

Hybridization

Columnea hybrid

Columnea schiedeana is a striking wild species with yellow flowers striped with red. However, it has an upright and spreading growth habit, which is not ideal for the hanging basket. To have the C. schiedeana striking flower and a cascading growth habit, I made crosses between yellow/cascading cultivars and C. schiedeana. The result is amazing. There is an F1 which has a nice cascading growth habit and beautiful yellow flowers with red stripes. Interestingly, this F1 also has a larger and longer flower than both its parents. However, this hybrid could be a dead end. It is male sterile like its female parent. I tried to use C. schiedeana and other cultivars as a pollen donor, but no seed has been developed so far.

Sinningia hybrid

Sinningia is another beautiful genus in the family Gesneriaceae. Many varieties are traded by hobby growers and developed by plant breeders. I choose a variety with vigorous growth and great flowering tendency.  I derive a population from this sell-pollinated commercial variety. My goal is to see the distribution of the flower color and flowering tendency, to have a better idea of the inheritance of these traits. The following picture shows that each has different patterns on the flower. The evaluation of the flowering tendency requires more time. Hopefully, I can identify some nice flowering individuals before this winter.

Experience 

Greenhouse Research Technician

Bayer CropScience

I am working for Bayer CropScience as a greenhouse research technician to support wheat breeding programs. I have been incorporating crop developmental status and growing degree days with crossing records to determine flowering and harvesting dates and to schedule growing and breeding activities. My other responsibilities included project operations, seed sowing, transplanting, sampling, and harvesting.
 

Full-time plant caretaker 

The Violet Barn

The Violet Barn provides a great collection of gesneriads for worldwide customers, like African violets, Streptocarpus, Episcia, Kohleria, and Sinningia. I am mainly responsible for Sinningia production, including stock plant management, propagation using tuber and stem cuttings, and pest control. I also participate in African violet and other houseplant production.

I repotted Sinningia tubers.

 I am mainly responsible for miniature Sinningia. These pots are a 2-1/4 inch.

Graduate Research Assistant

Michigan State University

I worked on a petunia breeding project in the graduate school. Since the heating cost is very high for greenhouse crop production during the winter and early spring, one of our focuses is to develop new cultivars with a higher development rate (e.g., leaf unfolding rate) to reduce the production time and energy costs. Previously, our lab already identified three quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with the development rate. One of my objectives is to make test crosses to evaluate the specificity of these QTL and the associated flanking markers. The goal is to see whether these markers flanking the QTL could predict plants with a higher development rate, and then provide the floriculture industry with reliable molecular tools in petunia breeding programs.

Projects
(1)Phenotype of Petunia recombinant inbred lines (RIL) for timing and quality traits at different temperatures
(2)Test for the utility of QTL and associated markers for faster development rate
(3)Identification of the effect of different photoperiods on the flowering time of four Echinacea cultivars

Petunia inbred lines

Echinacea

Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis

Courses
Physiology and Management of Herbaceous Plants (HRT 401)
Plant Breeding and Genetics Seminar (HRT 892)
Statistics for Biologists (STT 464)
Quantitative Genetics Plant Breeding (CSS 941)
Advanced Statistics Biologists (STT 814)
Advanced Plant Breeding (HRT 819)
Plant Genomics (PLB 812)
Plant Reproductive Biology and & Polyploidy (HRT 820)
History Geography Crop Plants (HRT 822)