Laura Rowley Wright grew up working on the family fruit farm in Santaquin, Utah.  During high school, she also worked at a commercial greenhouse business where she became interested in pursuing her education in Horticulture.  Laura came to USU as a freshman in 2006, majoring in Ornamental Horticulture.  She immediately approached Dr. Brent Black about part-time employment opportunities, and became interested in his research on fruiting plants native to Utah. During her freshman year, she designed and carried out experiments to optimize seed propagation of chokecherry (Prunus virginiana).  She presented these results at the annual meetings of the American Society for Horticulture Science (ASHS) in Phoenix, Arizona, where she was awarded a travel grant, and won first place in the ASHS undergraduate poster competition.  With the assistance of USU graduate student Nathan Phillips and Dr. Black, she submitted these finding to the Journal of the American Pomological Society, where they were published in the October 2007 issue as a peer reviewed article.  Laura is now pursuing additional research with Dr. Black, Dr. Grant Cardon, and graduate student Austin Hawks to develop methods for determining the relative salinity tolerance of strawberry varieties.  As development pressure in the Intermountain West pushes agriculture to more marginal soils, Laura’s work with salinity tolerance will have immediate benefits to Utah’s fruit producers.