Intelli-GEN-Design: Fruit of the Future: Dr. Amit Dhingra at TEDxWSU 2014

In this talk, Dr. Dhingra discusses preserving clean water, managing increasing carbon dioxide levels, and developing sustainable solutions are critical to the future of our planet. By transforming the way trees are grown and food is delivered and consumed, Amit Dhingra and his team are contributing solutions to these major challenges. By propagating trees using a soil-free method that are then grown at accelerated pace using greenhouse processes, Dhingra and his colleagues have found ways to reduce the use of water and pesticides. The process also integrates sophisticated genomic analysis of each plant to ensure genetic trueness. The result is a tree that will thrive and bear fruit sooner and ensure that consumers get uniform products. His group has also discovered natural ripening compounds that enhance and synchronize the quality of fruit providing healthful compounds to the consumer. He envisions that their use can reduce food wastage.

Bio- Dr. Amit Dhingra is an Associate Professor of Genomics and Biotechnology at the Washington State University. Along with some of his former graduate students, he has founded WSU's first plant-based spin-off company to directly impact and contribute to the global competitiveness of the horticulture industry in the US. He has published several breakthrough research articles in the areas of genomics, plastid transformation, photobiology and photosynthesis engineering in top plant science journals including Nature Genetics, PNAS, Plant Science, and Plant Physiology. He was honored by the College of Undergraduate Education and the Honors College at WSU for his work with students. Along with his team of graduate students and under-graduate students, fellow scientists and other colleagues, he works directly with farmers to understand the challenges they face and devises simple, scalable, and sustainable solutions for today and the future.

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