Montana State’s Chaofu Lu named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

BOZEMAN - Montana State University plant scientist Chaofu Lu has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one of the highest honors in the scientific community.

The newest class of Fellows was announced Thursday by the AAAS and includes 502 scientists from across the country. Lu, a professor in the MSU College of Agriculture's Department of Plant Sciences and Plant Pathology, is the fifth MSU faculty member to be named an AAAS fellow in the last decade.

Lu said he was surprised to be honored - so surprised, in fact, that he deleted the initial email notifying him of the lifetime honor, thinking it was spam.

"At first, I didn't believe it," Lu said. "And then I got a second email reminding me to respond. I was very surprised to be recognized."

The honor comes in recognition of Lu's longtime work studying camelina, a member of the brassica family that has potential as an oil-producing crop. Montana was one of the first states to study camelina in depth, Lu said, and for the past four years he has led a multi-state team in studying the genetics and natural variation of the plant to maximize its potential as a source of non-food oils.

"This is an excellent recognition of the contributions from Dr. Chaofu Lu and his ongoing research to understand camelina genetics and agronomics in Montana environments," said Sreekala Bajwa, MSU's vice president for agriculture. "Congratulations, Dr. Lu, on becoming an AAAS Fellow and on the cutting-edge research that led to this honor."

Over the past four years, Lu said significant strides have been made in understanding natural variation in camelina. His team has studied two primary variables that are key in sustainable production of the crop - oil yield and nitrogen use efficiency, which examines how much nitrogen the plant takes from its surrounding soil and from nitrogen applied as fertilizer.

"We knew that some plants, like brassicas, are kind of low in nitrogen use efficiency," said Lu. "We're focusing on remobilization, which means when plants die, they recycle nutrients from the dead tissues to the younger ones, and eventually to their seeds."

Nitrogen use efficiency is also important because if fertilizer is applied and the plant only uses a small portion of it, the remaining nitrogen can be detrimental to soil and water health.

To develop new lines of camelina that are high in both oil content and nitrogen use efficiency, Lu's team examined the plant's genes to identify which ones were responsible for each variable. In doing so, Lu said, plant breeders can potentially select which genes are expressed, thereby naturally increasing desirable traits in new lines.

"If we compare a low-oil plant and a high-oil plant, we can see higher expression of certain genes, which could help explain natural variations in oil content," he said. "We're going to find out what the genetics are behind those physiological mechanisms."

Lu has studied camelina for nearly 20 years, and noted that it is particularly suited for the climate of the northwestern U.S. His work seeks to help producers make informed decisions about what to plant, how to maintain the health of their soil and water, and how to minimize the crop's impact on its surrounding environment.

On his current project, supported by funding from the Department of Energy, Lu is collaborating with faculty across his department and at MSU's Eastern Agricultural Research Center in Sidney and Central Agricultural Research Center in Moccasin. Other members of the team come from the University of California Davis, Washington State University and two national laboratories.

He said that the collaborative aspect is a large part of what has made this research into camelina so productive. As a state that is leading the way in new-crop research, he credited his team for moving the needle on what is known about the high-impact crop.

"It's a diverse group with different expertise. These days, any project like this can't be done without collaboration. We all have different strengths, including right here in our faculty at MSU and at our research centers," he said. "We've had many people working on this, and we've made so much progress in the last 10 years or so, just working on this plant. I think being in Montana and doing this research has advantages, and we can adapt our research to our environment."

Lu is a member of the AAAS's 150th class of Fellows, a program which was launched in 1874. Fellows receive a certificate and a rosette pin, will appear in an upcoming edition of the journal Science and will be recognized in September at a celebration of the program's 150th anniversary. To become a fellow, scientists must be nominated by a section's steering committee, by three current AAAS Fellows or by the CEO of the organization. More information can be found at www.aaas.org.