This article appears in the May 2016 issue of Potato Grower.
Some people are comfortable in the limelight, happy—even eager—to bask in the glow of attention and praise their fine work merits. Lorie Ewing is not one of them.
For over three decades, Ewing has quietly gone about her work managing the University of Idaho potato tissue culture lab in Moscow—a job people across the U.S. potato industry say she has performed exceptionally well. Truth be told, the UI tissue culture program has almost never existed without Ewing. She has been there since the beginning, and it’s difficult to envision the program’s success without Ewing. Set to retire in July, Ewing has become to the Northwest’s seed potato industry what Lorne Michaels is to Saturday Night Live: not often visible, but integral, vital, even foundational.
Of course, Ewing deflects most of the accolades directed her way; her quiet, unassuming demeanor simply doesn’t have room for any sort of ego trip. “I’m just one cog in the big wheel of this region’s potato success,” Ewing says. “Everyone knows their role and works together so effectively. There’s not really anything special about this lab except that I’m a part of a bigger picture.”
Unassuming Start
Ewing earned a bachelor’s degree from Montana State University and a master’s from Cornell University, both in plant pathology. Upon her graduation from Cornell in 1983, she and her husband Steve “just decided to pack up the van, move out here and start looking for jobs in the general vicinity,” Ewing says. “I just started knocking on doors and passing my resume around.”
As fate would have it, the University of Idaho was looking for someone young and enthusiastic to take the reins of its fledgling potato tissue culture venture. “At the time, using tissue culture was a brand new practice—barely beyond the research stage,” Ewing says. “I hadn’t had any experience in it, but almost nobody had experience in it.”
In those early years, the sole purpose of Ewing’s lab was the production of virus-free plants for the university’s own research purposes. As time went by, however, potato growers began to gain interest in tissue culture as a means of mass-producing virus-free seed right there on their own places. Before long, Ewing was getting so many orders for tissue culture plantlets that the university had to construct more greenhouses to accommodate the demand.
Collaborative Growth
“I was just trying to figure it out myself in the early days,” says Ewing. “People around the country were trying to figure it out themselves, so there was a lot of exchange of information, trying to see what worked and what didn’t. We were all learning together, so collaboration didn’t seem like anything out of the ordinary.”
Throughout the latter half of the 1980s, Ewing played a key role in developing the Tri-State Breeding Program, a cooperative effort to develop new and improved potato varieties among UI, Washington State University, Oregon State University, and the respective USDA-ARS and potato commissions of the three states. In 2005, the Tri-State program formed the Potato Variety Management Institute (PVMI) to maximize not only the agricultural but also the economic success of new varieties.
“The fact that the three states got together on variety development was a real landmark I was able to be a part of,” says Ewing. “Beyond that is the establishment of PVMI. Really, though, it’s been a case of steady growth rather than huge landmarks.”
True to her character, Ewing’s career has been a case study in incremental, constant growth. In the ‘80s, Russet Burbank made up nearly 100 percent of what her lab produced and sent out. While russet lines still maintain a significant share of her time and effort, Ewing now maintains some 300 varieties including public, private and research lines. Ask around, and some people estimate that as much as 60 percent of the potatoes grown in the U.S. can trace their genealogy back to Ewing’s lab. Ewing herself is skeptical of such lofty numbers, but even she can’t deny the Moscow lab’s enormous and lasting impact on the industry.
“If I could have seen into the future, I would have been very surprised at how many different varieties are available and grown,” she says. “It’s pretty cool seeing all the new varieties coming in.”
Standard of Excellence
“I didn’t really choose this line of work,” Ewing says with a laugh. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’ve learned a tremendous amount, and I feel lucky that I happened to fall into it.
“I hope I’ve been able to provide people with a quality product they could rely on. That’s always the goal: get people what they ask for, when they want it.”
Mission accomplished, Lorie.