Week 3: The Spirit in the System
At the top of Cien Pagoda, after a 1.5km hike and 115 meters of elevation, I paused to take in the sweeping view of Sun Moon Lake. Its calm waters shimmered in the mountain light. But beyond its beauty, I learned of its deeper meaning — a place sacred to the Thao people, an aboriginal tribe whose traditions are inextricably tied to this lake.
Later that day, in Ita Thao shopping district, I sat down for a meal at a local aboriginal restaurant. Three water bamboo shoots arrived at the table, tucked in a glass shaped like a ballet shoe and topped with burnt cheese — the standout dish of the day. Yet their flavor wasn’t the most remarkable thing.
I found out these water bamboo shoots had come from Puli, a nearby town that produces over 90% of Taiwan’s supply. It owes this to its warm, humid climate, clay-loam soil, and the presence of Ustilago esculenta, a fungus essential to the crop’s tender growth. These shoots are a nutritional and economic staple, rich in protein, fiber, copper, and vitamin B6. They’re part of what keeps farmers in business, tourists coming back, and traditions alive.
Agriculture nourishes more than our bodies. It sustains livelihoods. It carries culture.
This week, I tackled the most computationally intense part of my website: genomic selection. Unlike traditional selection, which focuses on individual traits like yield or disease resistance, genomic selection uses information across the entire genome to predict the best performers.
The R scripts works well. But with full datasets, my laptop began to falter. My mentor set up a meeting with a local supercomputing agency, but their services didn’t fit our specific needs. Now, we’re exploring the possibility of purchasing a small-scale super computer for WorldVeg’s breeding projects to increase our computational capacity
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I’m building more than a website. I’m building a bridge that democratizes data between complex lines of code, statistical models, and the people who use them to grow the food we all depend on.
Meanwhile, I’ve gained a new appreciation for what goes into rigorous science. Before this internship, I used to skim though the Materials and Methods section of papers. I wanted to get to the good part: the results. But now, writing my own methods section for our speed breeding experiments, I see how essential they are. The lighting schedules. The growth containers. The air circulation. The temperature and humidity logs. Each detail ensures that the data we collect is reproducible, trustworthy, and meaningful.
Science lives in the specifics.
Whether I’m learning about Indigenous crops or implementing genomic models, the point is the same: to make impact tangible.
Puli’s water bamboo shoots are a symbol of local pride, a tourist draw, a source of stable income. Likewise, the genomic selection tools I’m building are scaffolding for better decisions, faster breeding, and stronger harvests.
To put it simply:
Better data means better plants.
Better plants mean better lives.
And that’s something worth hiking for.
