From the overgrown corner of the Lab Sciences Greenhouse, to student hands-on learning sprouting in the Agri Greenhouses, to the high-tech breakthroughs inside the Arkansas Bioscience Institute’s (ABI) glass walls — Arkansas State University greenhouses are growing more than plants. 

They’re growing research, innovation and a greener future. 

Lab Sciences Greenhouse

The lab sciences greenhouse has remained dormant since Travis Marsico, Ph.D., left the college two years ago to become, the now, executive director of the ABI. However, there are ongoing efforts to revive the greenhouse for environmental research and student engagement. 

Scott Mangan, Ph.D., an associate professor for biology, said his primary research related to the greenhouse focuses on community ecology.

“I’m looking at how plants interact with microbes below ground,” Mangan said. “The thrust of my research is to really understand how these interactions shape plant communities and also their functioning.”

He said the greenhouse was traditionally used to house plants for teaching purposes. 

“There’s a lot of plant diversity in there, and we’re trying to maintain that diversity because it’s an important resource for our plant classes,” Mangan said. 

Since the greenhouse became inactive, many of the plants have become overgrown and efforts to maintain the greenhouse also include clearing bench space for research and class experiments. However, its location between Lab Sciences East and West limits natural lighting and presents climate control challenges, making a reliable cooling system essential.

The remaining plants in the greenhouse are mostly tropical species, including cacti, Venus flytraps and even redwoods. 

Mangan said the department hopes to hire a new faculty member to teach and manage the greenhouse. Ideally, he said, the candidate would be trained in traditional botany and be able to cover the herbarium, which is also currently inactive. 

He said the role of greenhouses in combining fields and controlled experiments is essential in university research. 

“Nature is complex and greenhouses allow you to simplify the environment so you can test hypotheses more clearly. You can control variables better and get more precise results,” Mangan said. “For research, like mine, greenhouses are critical.”

He also said greenhouses can be a great asset for education. 

“It’s one thing to read about concepts in a textbook or see them on slides,” Mangan said. “It’s another to design an experiment, conduct it and analyze the results. That hands-on experience deepens their understanding and makes the learning much more effective.” 

Additionally, he said greenhouses also help students understand sustainability, biodiversity and the morphological diversity of plants. 

“It’s absolutely critical, now more than ever, that we educate each other. Not just professors to students, but students to their parents and families,” Mangan said. “Natural processes are fundamental to so many things we depend on like agriculture. We need to recognize and respect that. And the more we talk about it and teach each other, the more likely we are to protect what we have.”

The Agri Greenhouse

The College of Agriculture greenhouse provides hands-on training for students, hydroponic production of plants and disease studies. 

Pausuidaule, assistant director of farming, oversees the greenhouse. She said they use the greenhouse in plant science courses because students made it apparent in evaluations they wanted to see the full life-cycle of the crops they were planting, watering and maintaining. 

“That’s very helpful in the off-season as well, we can make available the planting materials, which will be essential for our course,” Pausuidaule said. “We make all different kinds of plants available in one spot. So every student, what they’re interested in, they can work on it.”

She said the greenhouse is also used as part of a course covering plant diseases. The greenhouse is used to demonstrate plant diseases, such as fusarium, by culturing fungus and inoculating plants. 

She said some diseases that plants have can be cultivated in the lab. 

“We culture in the lab, and then we bring it and inoculate in greenhouse plants, so they can see the symptoms of the diseases in the real field when they go into the real world, they can understand what kind of diseases they have,” Pausuidaule said. 

She said the last thing they do in the green house is hydroponics production of lettuce. 

Hydroponics is the process of growing plants in nutrient water rather than soil. She said each semester, students who are passionate about hydroponics take the responsibility of the plants with faculty guidance. 

“Hydroponics is a very new modern technology, I would say, and it’s very demanding these days,” Pausuidaule said. “After that semester, they will know more about hydroponics. So when they graduate from here, they will be skilled enough to work on the commercial level.”

Pausuidaule joined the university faculty in October 2024. She said before the greenhouse was out of operation for a period of time due to the lack of a horticulture teacher, which eventually went to William Giese Ph.D., an assistant professor of plant and soil science.

She said the greenhouse has undergone maintenance including setting up the hydroponic system, removing the shed net from the top of the greenhouse to reduce heating and ensuring proper water and nutrient management.

The greenhouse  now operates more efficiently than before, thanks to collective efforts from faculty and students. 

“Maintenance people might hate us, but every month we are calling them to do the maintenance that shows that the greenhouse is more working compared to the previous years or years back,” Pausaidaule said. “It’s not only I who did it, but it’s also because of the contributions that Dr. Giese already was here and I was here, and other students also took initiative for this. So we are all together. We did it together.”

She said while not all students are involved, those taking plant science or related courses can participate. High school students also visit the greenhouse as part of community activities. 

“It totally depends on their interest. If they’re interested, we are good to go. We always welcome them,” Pausaidaule said. 

She said they are planning to focus on growing vine crops like tomatoes and capsicum in the next year. 

Pausaidaule said greenhouses are important for sustainable agriculture, especially in the context of global warming, to ensure crop availability, reduce economic impact on farmers and ensure urban agriculture is feasible.  

“Global warming is very serious these days and this is very real and we cannot ignore that,” Pausaidaule said. “Survival is not about how well you are, but how well you can evolve. Greenhouses is one of the evolutions in agriculture, especially in horticulture.”

ABI Greenhouse

The ABI Greenhouse was built 20 years ago using funds from Arkansas’ tobacco settlement, with a mission to support research benefiting the state’s agriculture and public health. 

Kimberly Lee, ABI greenhouse manager, said her passion for plants stems from her upbringing in the countryside, surrounded by rice fields.

“I love plants and just learning new things about them,” Lee said. “All these different experiments are always neat to see what they’re going to be working with and what possibly can come out of that to help people, not just here, but around the world.”

As manager, she ensures projects comply with federal guidelines and trains researchers on proper procedures to keep the greenhouse running efficiently. The facility currently hosts several research projects, including studies on rice, invasive species and corn. 

The rice research examines the impact of higher nighttime temperatures and groundwater salinity on crop fields. The invasive species project, led by Marsico, focuses on managing invasive sugarcane and its competition with rice and cotton. The corn research, which previously explored biofuels and switchgrass, now works on developing a natural sweetener protein that can be produced in corn more efficiently than in a lab. 

Past projects included vaccine development using tobacco plants and producing medical proteins through genetic modification. 

Lee said it continues to improve with upgrades and new equipment. She said she hopes the greenhouse continues to grow in its contributions to agricultural and health sciences, both locally and globally. 

“‘It’s amazing to see the projects that come out of here, because sometimes you think Arkansas State University, it’s a little college, but when you really look at some of the stuff that’s coming out of here, it’s major,” Lee said. “I envision that it’s just going to keep getting bigger and hopefully get more researchers and more grants.”

She also said the pathway for student action in environmental education and sustainability is to take personal initiative. 

“I think people need to start looking and seeing what they can do to help instead of thinking, ‘I’m just one person, it’s not gonna matter what I do.’ If every person thought that, then how can it lead to a major impact being made?” Lee said. “So I think that’s one of the biggest things: to not to keep thinking ‘I’m just one person, I can’t make a difference’ because everybody can.”

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