This proposal has been developed in order to define and plan a training program in a fundamental area of Plant Biology, regulation of plant growth and development. Recent evidence that signaling mechanisms in plants are controlled by the established plant hormones as well as other types of signaling molecules has led us to increase our research efforts on regulatory events that occur during plant development. The education of each trainee will include research and instruction in lecture and discussion course. The trainees research will be supervised by a faculty collaborator in the Graduate Research Traineeship (GRT) Program of the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California at Riverside (UCR). An equally important goal of this NSF-GRT Program is to promote student diversity in Plant Biology, leading to an increased number of Ph.D. scientists from currently underrepresented ethnic groups. Innovative Inter- Institutional Arrangements have been made with Tuskegee University and the University of Puerto Rico an Rio Piedras for the purpose of recruitment of underrepresented minorities to graduate studies in Plant Biology. Faculty collaborators in the NSF-GRT will visit the two campuses to present a seminar and talk to students that are interested in Plant Biology. Qualified students from these institutions will visit UCR, and will be given priority during the selection of NSF-GRT recipients.
