Horticulture PhD candidate Samantha Bosco has been awarded a Botany in Action (BIA) Fellowship from Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, Pittsburgh, Pa. The fellowship will support the Skarù·rę’ Food Forest, a collaborative agroforestry project with members of the Tuscarora Nation.

BIA fellowships support emerging plant-focused scientists through research grants and science communications training. Fellows develop new community-based plant knowledge combined with a scientific understanding of plants for use in growing a greener world and promote interactive scientific education about the importance of plants, biodiversity and sustainable landscapes for human well-being.

Using climate-smart, nut tree-based agroforestry systems as a starting point, the project will draw on the emerging fields of land education, decolonial participatory action research, and Indigenous food sovereignty, to reexamine the roles and possibilities for sustainable agriculture research programs, particularly at land grant institutions, to dismantle settler-colonial notions of land and agriculture, says Bosco.

Bosco’s dissertation research focuses on the past, present, and future of temperate nut trees and their use in temperate agroforestry, particularly in the context of nature-based climate solutions. The fellowship will help expand the existing Skarù·rę’ Food Forest planting at the Tuscarora Nation School near Lewiston, N.Y., facilitate cross-cultural connections and develop a Tuscarora Food Forest guidebook.