UF plant researcher wins Florida State Horticultural Society award

August 18, 2008

Wagner Vendrame, an associate professor of environmental horticulture at the University of Florida’s Tropical Research and Education Center, Homestead, recently received the 2008 Florida State Horticultural Society Presidential Gold Medal Award.

Presented to Vendrame at the society’s annual meeting this summer, the award is the most prestigious honor from the FSHS, given to the individual whose work published in the previous five years of the Proceedings of the Florida State Horticultural Society has contributed the most to the Sunshine State’s horticulture sciences.

Vendrame joined UF in 2001 and has more than 16 years of experience in plant micropropagation and biotechnology. His research program involves production and conservation of plants using tissue culture, molecular biology and cryopreservation techniques.

Most of his current work is focused on orchids. However, Vendrame also has loftier research goals. He recently launched work dealing with space biology, including a 2007 experiment aboard the International Space Station to evaluate the growth and multiplication of plant cell suspension cultures under microgravity.

Vendrame is also well known for his work with biofuels — specifically, for developing new ways to propagate selected hybrids of the jatropha nut, the oil from which holds great potential for use in biodiesel.