Nathan John Fumia, PhD

Intro

Hello, my name is Nathan Fumia. I am a fourth generation California farmer and a plant breeding and quantitative genetics research scientist. I have broad interests and experience in all things crop improvement, including but not limited to agronomy, horticulture, integrated pest management, and breeding and genetics. Currently I reside in the beautiful state of Hawaii working with the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center on tropical and sub-tropical crop improvement, quantitative genetics and plant breeding. Check out more about my PhD research completed at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2023 and my crop improvement lab at Hawaii Agriculture Research Center in the work section!

My research lab foci with the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center include basic and applied genetics research in biomass, vegetable, and fruit crops relevant to Hawaii and international tropical agriculture, breeding and domestication programs, controlled-environment agriculture for speed-breeding, omics, and breeding methodologies development and improvement.

Work

The Fumia Plant Genetics Lab at the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center is aimed towards the improvement of tropical and sub-tropical crops, with a wide range of species from biomass and vegetable annuals to perennial flowers, tropical trees, and fruits. This lab aims to leverage all technological and methodological approaches to inform our decisions, including speed-breeding, omics data, multivariate statistics, and stochastic simulation. As of 2024, we are working varied projects: neo-domestication of 3 different species (Stevia rebaudiana, Tanacetum cinerariifolium, and Schoenocaulon officinale), disease resistance breeding in Coffea spp. and Acacia koa, photosynthetic pathway shift in Ananas comosus, floral transition pathway in Stevia rebaudiana, and variety evaluation of Theobroma cacao germplasm.

My PhD dissertation work focused on increasing agrobiodiversity through neo-domestication to offer diverse food, improve crop plant adaptability to climate change, increase production resilience, preserve healthy ecosystems, and improve soil fertility. Whilst historical domestication is well understood, the expectation and empirical evidence of newly domesticating a crop is sparse. The purpose of my dissertation was to address these two aspects, expectation and evidence. I worked with three tropical and sub-tropical species to derive expectations of trait gain and variance in breeding populations along the domestication continuum through the breeding cycle. First, the endemic hardwood tree species Acacia koa was used to understand the influence of breeding population size and status on disease resistance trait frequencies in progeny, informing crossing parameters during the breeding cycle. Second, the widely cultivated yet semi-domesticated cacao was used to understand the differential precision of evaluation required depending on the status of development between genotypes, informing evaluation parameters during the breeding cycle. Third, the clonally propagated crop stevia is being used to understand the shifts of gain and variation across generations using phenotypic recurrent selection, informing selection parameters during the breeding cycle. With these expectations, stochastic simulation was used for breeding scheme development, dependent upon species life-history, traits of interest, and program constraints (logistical and financial). It is my hope to inspire wide adoption of long-term breeding strategies, such as neo-domestication and wide hybridization, through this breeding scheme development to improve food security.

I am also a part-time contributor to the Customer Success team at iUNU, Inc. as a Horticultural Specialist where my primary role is as a data-driven (Computer-Vision) horticultural analyst improving the production methods of our clients across the horticulture industry. My main contributions are in integrated pest management techniques and applications through computer-vision technology while also participating in cultivation management techniques.

For more about my experience, please check out my CV and my GitHub!

About

Crop improvement, in all its forms, is my true passion. Maximizing yield and quality of agricultural and horticultural commodities brings me enormous gratification. I grew up as a fourth generation California farmer, learning the operations of a fruit orchard production company. Following my graduation from Cal Poly, I spent a couple years crop consulting in Watsonville and Hollister, California on dozens of specialty row crops, assisting small and large farmers in integrated pest management, fertility, irrigation, and best practices. Following this I moved to San Diego, California to be production manager of a cannabis greenhouse for 3 years, leveraging technologically advanced systems. Now, I am at the University of Hawaii studying plant breeding and working with the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center on breeding and domestication of Stevia in a private-public research partnership. I also spend time working with iUNU as a horticultural specialist with the specific aim towards the success of our customers. Every facet and step of my pursuit is the improvement of agricultural and horticultural production.

Curriculum Vitae

Publications

Fumia, N., Zenil-Ferguson, R., Wolfe, M., Kantar, M.B., (2024). Simulated exploration of parameter space and resource allocation for strategic creation of neo-domestication breeding programs. Crop Science. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.21359.

Pratt, R., Kantar, M.B., Fumia, N., Nankar, A.N. (2024). From wild to mild and back again: envisioning a new model of crop improvement strategies. Frontiers in Horticulture, 3, 1409398. https://doi.org/10.3389/fhort.2024.1409398.

Fumia, N., Nair, R., Lin, Y. P., Lee, C. R., Chen, H. W., von Wettberg, E. B., Kantar, M. ,Schafleitner, R. (2023). Leveraging genomics and phenomics to accelerate improvement in mungbean: A case study in how to go from GWAS to selection. The Plant Phenome Journal, 6(1), e20088. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppj2.20088.

Fumia, N., Kantar, MB, Lin, YP, Schafleitner, R, Lefebvre, V, Paran, I, Börner, A, Diez, MJ, Prohens, J, Bovy, A, Boyaci, F, Pasev, G, Tripodi, P, Barchi, L, Giuliano, G, Barchenger, DW. (2023). Exploration of high-throughput data for heat tolerance selection in Capsicum annuum. The Plant Phenome. https://doi.org/10.1002/ppj2.20071.

Jungers, J, Ewing, PM, Runck, B, Maaz, T, Carlson, C, Neyhart, J, Fumia, N., Bajgain, P, Subedi, S, Sharma, S, Senay, S, Hunter, M, Cureton, C, Gutknecht, J, Kantar, M. (2023). Adapting perennial grain and oilseed crops for climate resiliency. Crop Science. https://doi.org/10.1002/csc2.20972.

Fumia, N., Pironon, S., Rubinoff, D., Khoury, C. K., Gore, M. A., & Kantar, M. B. (2022). Wild relatives of potato may bolster its adaptation to new niches under future climate scenarios. Food and Energy Security, 00, e360. https://doi.org/10.1002/fes3.360

Fumia, N., Rubinoff, D., Zenil-Ferguson, R., Khoury, C.K., Pironon, S., Gore, M.A., Kantar, M.B. (2022). Interactions between breeding system and ploidy affect niche breadth in Solanum. R. Soc. Open Sci. 9: 211862. http://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.211862

Valle-Echevarria, A.D., Fumia, N., Gore, M.A. and Kantar, M.B. (2021). Accelerating Crop Domestication in the Era of Gene Editing. In Plant Breeding Reviews, I. Goldman (Ed.). https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119828235.ch4

Pironon, S., Borrell, J.S., Ondo, I., Douglas, R., Phillips, C., Khoury, C.K., Kantar, M.B., Fumia, N., Soto Gomez, M., Viruel J., Govaerts, R., Forest, F., Antonelli, A. (2020). Toward Unifying Global Hotspots of Wild and Domesticated Biodiversity. Plants. 2020; 9(9):1128. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants9091128

Popular Press

Fumia, N., Kantar, M., Radovich, T. (2022, October 19). Nathan Fumia is in The Science Zone on in Your Head with Professor Ted [Radio broadcast]. KTUH.

Wight, A. J., Fumia, N., Kantar, M.B., Khoury, C. (2022). Better Breeding Tools for Future-Proofing Potatoes. Alliance Biodiversity-CIAT. https://alliancebioversityciat.org/stories/future-proofing-potatoes

Elements

i = 0;

while (!deck.isInOrder()) {
    print 'Iteration ' + i;
    deck.shuffle();
    i++;
}

print 'It took ' + i + ' iterations to sort the deck.';