Celina’s research and teaching efforts focus on the production of high-value plants in controlled environments. Before joining the faculty in the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, she served as Assistant Professor in Controlled Environment Horticulture at the University of Florida. She is originally from Costa Rica but grew up in Guatemala and lived in Honduras, where she earned a BS in Agricultural Sciences from Zamorano University. She has a MS from the University of Arkansas where she specialized in substrate research for nursery crops. Celina graduated from Purdue in 2014 with a PhD in horticulture. During that time she evaluated the use of LEDs for greenhouse tomato production. She is leading several projects that primarily belong to one of three main research areas:
1) indoor propagation of high-value crops, which focuses on using indoor farming technologies to increase rooting success of hard-to-root young plants;
2) urban gardening, which focuses on helping greenhouse growers produce high-quality, resilient plants that will thrive in the consumer environment; and
3) lighting for indoor plant production, which focuses on evaluating plant responses to light quantity and quality using LEDs.
Celina will be developing new courses on greenhouse, hydroponic, and controlled-environment plant production. She’s very enthusiastic to be back at Purdue and welcomes the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues who share similar interests!