Date: Monday, April 1, 2024
Time: 3:00 pm
Speaker:  Amanda Solliday, PhD Introduction Seminar
Title:  Floriculture Sustainability and Climate Adaptation
Host: Dr. Melinda Knuth

Location: 121 Kilgore / Hybrid
Join Zoom Meeting: https://ncsu.zoom.us/j/99261847467?pwd=KzY0V0owOG1FbE9lZ1JscjNoWTRRUT09
Meeting ID: 992 6184 7467
Passcode: 028223

 Seminar_Amanda Solliday_4.1.24.pdf

Abstract: Climate change and economic inequality are pushing sustainability to the forefront of many company strategies, and this includes floriculture businesses. People who buy cut flowers are also becoming attuned to the way their flowers are grown and processed, with interest in practices such as composting, local sourcing, and use of renewable or sustainable materials for packaging, according to the Floral Marketing Fund. One of the primary industry groups, the American Floral Endowment, has also made sustainability a top priority for education, research, and outreach.At the same time, growing conditions are shifting due to climate change. For example, the 2012 USDA Hardiness Zone maps placed the Piedmont region of North Carolina at the intersection of Zones 7b and 8a. The area is now squarely within Zone 8a in the 2023 maps, and future projections from the U.S. Global Change Research Program suggests most of the Piedmont will become Zone 8b before the end of the century.This presentation will outline research areas designed to help fill in some of the gaps in knowledge surrounding sustainability and climate adaptation in the cut flower industry, including projects that will assess existing sustainability practices and barriers in the United States floriculture industry, apply carbon accounting to locally grown cut flowers and distribution, and characterize cut flower production and timing in North Carolina.

Speaker bio: Amanda Solliday is a doctoral student in horticultural sciences at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on sustainability and climate change in the horticulture industry, under the supervision of Dr. Melinda Knuth. Amanda brings outreach experience from her previous work in communications at two national labs and Duke University, as a public radio science reporter, and as a scientist in the federal government. She earned a master’s degree in crop and soil sciences from Cornell University, where she specialized in international agriculture and rural development, and also received a master’s in journalism from Indiana University. As an undergraduate, Amanda studied biology and environmental studies at Illinois Wesleyan University.