Diane Rowland is the Dean of the College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences (formerly Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture) and Director of the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station at the University of Maine. For most of her career, Diane has specialized in the physiological mechanisms of crop stress, particularly related to drought and crop water scarcity resilience. She pioneered the development of primed acclimation, a water management system that capitalizes on the nearly universal priming response in crop plants to enhance drought tolerance. Diane began her scientific career as a research plant physiologist and lead scientist with the USDA Agricultural Research
Our conversation was recorded in October 2023.