Dr Karen Tanino is a Professor of Abiotic Stress Physiology in the Department of Plant Sciences, College of Agriculture and Bioresources (AgBio) at the University of Saskatchewan, hired in 1989 and was the second female faculty member to be hired by AgBio. She has a BSc in General Biology (Ecology emphasis) and an MSc in Crop Science from the University of Guelph. Her PhD in Horticulture Science is from Oregon State University. She investigates the interactions of plants with their environment. She has published over 120 peer-reviewed papers, chapters and books. Her research program examines how plants can increase their resistance to multiple abiotic stresses including low and high temperature, drought, salt as well as biotic stress on a range of plants and crops from trees to vegetable to large field crops. With colleagues, she has developed a patented seed treatment to increase germination and crop root growth under stressful conditions. Capitalizing on our northern latitudes, she has also comprehensively studied the potential of Saskatchewan to be an exporter of high quality strawberry crowns, garlic, medicinal plant extracts, etc. under the positive Northern vigour® responses in horticulture crops. She was recently recognized to be among the top 20% of instructors in AgBio as determined by student surveys.
In addition to teaching and research at the University of Saskatchewan, Karen was the President of the Canadian Society for Horticultural Science (awarded for her extraordinary contributions), was the Chair of the Northern Food Security Thematic Network under University of the Arctic, Chaired both the 1st and 2nd Saskatchewan Food Summits, and Co-chaired the 8th International Plant Cold Hardiness Seminar among many other conferences. She also initiated and was founding chair of the Prairie Horticulture Certificate Program (PHC), a home study based program across a consortium of four prairie universities and colleges with an enrolment of over 4500 students since its inception. She holds the W.J. White Professorship, was the second person to have been designated Global Fellow of Iwate University (Japan), and is Adjunct Professor in the Dept. Crop Physiology, University of Agricultural Sciences (GKVK), Bangalore, India (top ranked agricultural university and department in India).
How did you get into horticulture?
I was raised by my grandparents for various times throughout my early childhood to the age of 10. My grandfather was the best gardener in the area and basically homesteaded after arriving in Canada around 1905 and settling on Vancouver Island. I remember my mother complaining that instead of selecting sites close to everyone else, grandpa would select the site with the best soil and closest proximity to water, which inevitably was furthest away from everyone on the least developed land, in order to grow the best garden. After I was born, I was grandpa’s right hand person in the garden. In fact, there is a photo somewhere revealing this young culprit who took her first steps trying to pick one of grandpa’s prized flowers! By doing, I learned about composting, growing peaches, pears, cherries, vegetables, root crops…and flowers. My parents were also good gardeners and had the first garden plots in Ottawa, located about 10 km from where we lived. In that first year, there was no water---just tilled land. I remember sitting horizontally on the back seat of our car surrounded by dozens of milk jugs filled with water. Of coarse, we could not even drive up to the plot but then hauled the water several hundred feet away to our garden. But, my parents were determined and dad even tied his own net out of a roll of string for the snow peas to climb. That early exposure to gardening really left a lasting impression on me which continues today. Actually, my husband, M.P.M. Nair, is one of the most awarded gardeners in Saskatchewan, is a horticultural judge, and was in the first batch of USask Master Gardeners. He holds two US patents for ‘First Canadian’ lemon and ‘First Canadian Golden’ lime and together, we have been working to develop other Low Light Tolerant (LLT) plants that can be grown year-round inside the house with the available sunlight.