Pamela C. Ronald
University of California, Davis
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Primary Section: 62, Plant, Soil, and Microbial Sciences Secondary Section: 25, Plant Biology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2019)
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Biosketch
Pamela Ronald completed her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley (1990), earned a B.S. from the Reed College (1982), an M.S. from Stanford University and an M.S. from the University of Uppsala, Sweden. Prof Ronald uses genetic techniques to understand the plant response to infection and tolerance to environmental stress. With her collaborators, she received the 2008 USDA National Research Initiative Discovery Award and the 2012 Tech Award for the innovative use of technology to benefit humanity. In 2015 Scientific American named her one of the 100 most influential people in biotechnology. Ronald’s book, Tomorrow’s Table: Organic farming, Genetics and the Future of Food was selected as one of a 25 most influential books with the power to inspire college readers to change the world. Her 2015 TED talk has been viewed by more than 1.9 million people and translated into 26 languages. In 2019, she received the American Society of Plant Biologists Leadership Award, an honorary doctorate from the Swedish Agricultural University and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 2020 she was named a World Agricultural Prize Laureate by the Global Confederation of Higher Education Associations for Agricultural and Life Sciences.
Research Interests
Pamela Ronald's laboratory investigates the plant response to environmental stress and microbial infection and has contributed to the establishment of rice 'Kitaake' as a model system for biological studies. In 1995, her laboratory discovered a new and important class of immune receptors, represented by the rice XA21 receptor kinase, and also later identified the XA21 ligand, which is a sulfated, processed and secreted bacterial immunogen. These discoveries continue to have implications for studies of infectious disease of both plants and animals. She is also known for her leading role in isolation of the rice Submergence Tolerance locus that confers tolerance to two weeks of complete submergence. Ronald's team further discovered and demonstrated that one of the genes at this locus, designated Sub1A, is upregulated rapidly in response to submergence and that expression of Sub1A is sufficient to confer robust tolerance to submergence in transgenic plants. These studies facilitated the development of Sub1 rice varieties by breeders at the International Rice Research Institute. Sub1 varieties are now grown by millions of subsistence farmers in India and Bangladesh, providing a greater than 60% yield advantage. Ronald is recognized for her efforts to communicate the importance and relevance of scientific research to food security and sustainable agriculture.
