Dr. Kate Congreves is an Assistant Professor of Environmental Horticulture & Agronomy in the Department of Plant Sciences in the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at the University of Saskatchewan. She has expertise in nutrient cycling, soil health, and greenhouse gas emissions. Her research program is aimed at understanding the mechanisms that regulate nitrogen and carbon transformations, and the implications for agroecosystem functioning. She received the Dean’s New Researcher Award of Excellence in 2020 and was named the Professor of the Year by the Agricultural Students’ Association in 2021—honours awarded by the College of Agriculture and Bioresources at USask. She has authored 31 peer-reviewed publications, including a highly-cited paper in Nature Geoscience; an invited Marschner Review in Plant and Soil; and an invited textbook chapter on soil health for the Canadian Society of Soil Science. Further, she co-developed the national NSERC CREATE program that trains graduate students across Canada on Climate-Smart Soils; at USask, she created a new course on Climate Smart Agriculture for both undergraduate and graduate students.
How did you get into Horticulture?
“My interest in horticulture traces back to my early years, when as a child I would garden with my mom. We would plant every vegetable I could think of—and tend to them all summer. I remember creating networks of pathways in the soil between the plant rows, where my brother and I would drive our toy cars and Tonka trucks. Soil was a big part of our game! We would move it around, push it up against the plant roots, haul away the weeds, and hunt for earthworms which always showed up after the rain. Sometimes we would expand our tracks to the compost pile out back, where our pumpkins seemed to grow more voraciously than anywhere else. Immersed in that garden was where I started to think about the soil and horticulture, consider different aspects of plants, and to appreciate the environment. I am grateful for that experience and to be able to carry it into my career today. As a scientist who now studies horticulture, I have been inspired by a long list of formidable women in horticultural and agricultural science who came before me, including: Drs. Barb Zeeb (Queen's), Laura Van Eerd (Guelph), Claudia Wagner-Riddle (Guelph), Diane Knight (Sask), and Karen Tanino (Sask). I am forever grateful for their mentorship and inspiration at different points along my academic journey. I look forward to doing the same for the next generation.