UNIVERSITY PARK — A team comprising faculty from five departments in the College of Agricultural Sciences and the Department of Biology in the Eberly College of Science, funded by a $262,500 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, has created a novel program to train doctoral degree students to conduct interdisciplinary research on the relationship between soils, plants and consumers.

The initiative is intended to address a lack of integrated knowledge about how soils, plants, and human genetics and lifestyle interact to affect human health, according to Joshua Lambert, professor of food science, who is leading the project, titled “Soils, Plants, and Consumers: A systems-based approach to the relationship between plants and human health.”

“The relationship between plants and human health is governed by many factors including plant genetics, environment and production/processing steps, as well as consumer genetics, diet and agricultural practices,” he said. “There is a dearth of interdisciplinary studies on the interactions of these factors.”

Similarly, Lambert added, there is an under-developed pipeline of researchers approaching the topic of plants and human health in a comprehensive manner.

“Our program applies a novel systems-based approach to study the relationship between plants and consumers and develops a model for training new scientists to lead this area of research,” he said.

Initially, the team will recruit a diverse cohort of three doctoral students, who will be coadvised by mentors with complementary disciplinary expertise. Faculty team members will provide research training and professional development opportunities focused on improving communication, grant-writing, entrepreneurship and mentorship skills.

The project’s faculty collaborators will help ensure student success with their combined expertise in food science, sensory science, plant science, soil science, ethnobotany, metabolomics and toxicology, Lambert noted. All project collaborators are currently involved in interdisciplinary research on food and medicinal plants, he added.

“Our goal is that the fellows supported by this proposal will be leaders in academic, government and industry research centers,” he said. “Their interdisciplinary awareness of issues across the soils, plants and consumers continuum will allow them to direct diverse teams of researchers focused on complex research questions and will allow them to effectively communicate with a broad range of stakeholders and policy makers.”