UC ANR Blogs

Ahluwalia brings financial savvy, community ethic to UCCE director role

New area director to support UC ANR programs in Colusa, Glenn, Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties

As the new University of California Cooperative Extension area director for five Northern California counties, Teghpreet “Preet” Ahluwalia has an impressive track record of connecting people with resources that can improve lives and uplift future generations.

After college at UC Davis, Ahluwalia immersed herself in the world of finance and real estate and started her own investment firm. Its clientele were mainly older adults seeking opportunities to build long-term wealth and security for their descendants.

“We wanted to open up these opportunities in our network to people who didn't have access to them, or wouldn't normally come across them,” Ahluwalia said.

She also volunteered on the board of the National Association of Women Business Owners to share her knowledge and help provide the resources that her entrepreneurial peers needed to thrive.

Beginning in her new role with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources this past August, Ahluwalia now provides administrative support as the area director to UCCE advisors and staff across Colusa, Glenn, Butte, Yuba and Sutter counties. Those teams offer expertise, partnerships and programs to benefit local food systems, community health and economic development.

Ahluwalia's passion for leading-edge research – coupled with her financial acumen and interest in agriculture – make her well-suited to serve as UCCE director.

“This position really represents the best of all worlds, where my experience in higher education and management just come together in this one role to help our clientele and community get to the next step of where they want to go,” she said.

Ahluwalia learned how to optimize budgets in Modoc County

Maximizing resources in a rural, farming area with a relatively small population is nothing new for Ahluwalia. After earning her MBA from UC Davis, Ahluwalia worked as the financial manager for the sheriff's office of Modoc County, in the far northeastern corner of California.

In remote Modoc, home to 8,500 resourceful people, Ahluwalia gained invaluable experience in navigating county government, working with the county administrator, seeing how budgets were determined – and then making the most of limited funds.

“We had a very limited budget in Modoc County, so we were always thinking creatively about what we could do differently to stretch that money or get more from another source,” she said.

Although Ahluwalia enjoyed living in Alturas and loved the natural beauty of the region, she moved back to the Sacramento area after getting married. In planning her next career move, Ahluwalia sought a path into higher education, taking a position in the admissions office of her alma mater, the UC Davis Graduate School of Management.

But when the UCCE area director job opening at UC ANR was posted, Ahluwalia saw an opportunity to tie-in another prominent aspect of her family story and heritage.

Childhood experiences, family history shaped ag interests

Although she was born in Calgary, Canada, Ahluwalia spent most of her formative years in Porterville in Tulare County. During her childhood, her father, who worked as a pharmacist during the day, also owned a small farm where he grew grapes and prunes. He would do his farm work from the evening until late at night – and on weekends.

“I think he was trying to do a little too much,” Ahluwalia said.

Although he eventually sold his operations, her father's herculean efforts demonstrate the importance of agriculture in their Sikh culture. Punjab, the homeland of many Sikhs, is a largely agricultural state in India.

Several UCCE advisors in the Central Valley identify as Sikh; during a recent regional UC ANR meeting, one of them expressed delight about Ahluwalia's leadership position.

“They didn't know I was in a director role,” Ahluwalia recalled. “They were just like, ‘We're excited to see you in this role because we've never seen anyone in this role from our community.'”

New director builds on legacy of strong relationships

In the first few months on the job, Ahluwalia has been focused on strengthening relationships with county agricultural commissioners, boards of supervisors and other key community leaders and organizations. Building upon the foundation set by the preceding UCCE county directors, Ahluwalia aims to make more people aware of the wide range of Cooperative Extension programs.

“I'm realizing, through my conversations in each of the counties, that people know we're here, they know we exist,” she said. “But to a certain extent, the community may not be familiar with the full spectrum of what UCCE is doing. Some of them don't know that we're pioneering 4-H youth programs, or that we're providing nutrition education through CalFresh Healthy Living – in addition to our farm advisors and volunteer programs such as UC Master Gardeners.”

To make work more productive, efficient and enjoyable for those advisors and staff, Ahluwalia said she is also looking to streamline administrative processes and offer support in whatever way she can.

“One of the biggest things I'll be doing is listening a lot,” she said. “What do they need and how can I advocate for that? I can't do anything alone – I can do the outreach; I can build the relationships. But they're the actual people who are connecting the research to our communities and providing that education and extension.”

Lynn Schmitt-McQuitty, UC ANR's director of county Cooperative Extension, believes that Ahluwalia has just the skill set and experience to thrive in managing teams and partnerships across five counties – all with their different priorities and needs.

“With her previous appointments in the Modoc County Sheriff's Office and the UC Davis School of Management, she has the essentials to successfully navigate the complex UCCE environment,” said Schmitt-McQuitty. “I'm excited to see how these skills will expand the research and extension in the region and build on the solid foundations the previous county directors established.”

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One Fungus = One Name: Fungal Nomenclature in the Age of Genetic Analysis

A few weeks ago Mark got a call from a person who was wondering why a fungus that we work with, he believes it was Zythia ,also has another name, that being Gnomonia.

There's quite a bit to sort out here, and so please follow us here.

This is a topic very much worth some discussion as renaming of things in our day does carry some emotional weight to it, indeed Mark suspects this person was wondering if these two names weren't part of such a scheme.  As any bird watcher knows, the birder community has been rocked in recent times by the plan of the American Ornithological Society to rename some 80 birds because the current names are seen as offensive by some (which we are not going to publicize here).

The double naming, also known as "dual nomenclature", of many fungi, which refers to sexual and asexual stages of the same fungus, is nothing like this however.  The way this system of two names for the same fungus came about was that the botanist Karl Linnaeus, who in the 18th century began to formalize the system of naming organisms, saw fungi simply as plants and concluded from there that fungal spores were like seeds.  And so it followed, in the mind of Linnaeus, that since one species of plant equaled one single type of seed, it would only follow that one species of fungus should equal one type of spore.  The problem that we now know is that the asexual form,  the anamorph, of many fungi looks one way and produces one kind of spore, while the sexual type, the teleomorph, of the very same fungus is totally different and produces an entirely different type of spore.

Put another way, the changing of the shape or form, biological function and reproductive methods (think sexual vs asexual) of the same fungus is usually driven by environmental cues and is what has resulted in the dual nature of fungal naming, simply because scientists until recent times saw them, naturally since the two forms didn't look anything like one another, as different fungi.

So still for many fungi the asexual stage and the sexual stage have different names, although the fungus is the same one. For the field practitioner, a lot of this doesn't make a huge difference, since most of the fungi we deal with and see out in the field like Botrytis gray mold, powdery mildew and anthracnose are in the anamorph stage, although it is worth noting that they do have a teleomorphic stage as well - Botrytis has Botryotinia fuckeliana (see photo below, it has not yet found in California, although every once in a there are rumors), Colletotrichum which causes anthracnose has Glomerella, and Zythia is the anamorph of Gnomonia. Powdery mildew, Podosphaera aphanis, of strawberry and raspberry, has made the transition to one name only for both the asexual and the sexual stage.

Speaking of Podosphaera aphanis, you might see it having another name, syn, Sphaerotheca macularis. It is a different story from the above.  Sphaerotheca macularis is the former name of Podosphaera aphanis. You might see it used in some older literature. The name change was due to new genetic tools used for taxonomy. This blog post explains it in more detail (https://ucanr.edu/blogs/blogcore/postdetail.cfm?postnum=4260).

What has been bringing the story of dual nomenclature nearer to a close - and yes there is plenty of controversy in between, see attached paper - is the use of the use of genetic analysis which allows for the close view of to confirm that these to our human eye differently formed versions of the same fungus are indeed the same.

 

 

Botryotinia fuckeliana on the left (produced in the laboratory), Botrytis cinerea on the right (a mummified strawberry).

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