I spent close to 10 years working as a research scientist with Cuba’s National Tobacco Research Institute where I directed projects for the country’s tobacco industry. I established DNA fingerprinting and trial tested Cuban tobacco varieties. I optimized somatic hybridization techniques and produced new nuclear-cytoplasmic combinations. I generated disease resistant breeding lines and characterized the germplasm bank using cytogenetics, molecular and morph agronomic markers. I studied how tobacco cultivars reacted to different biotic and abiotic stresses, and I curated a tobacco collection. All this while working towards a PhD.
When I emigrated to Canada in 2010, I couldn’t land a job. A resume review led to a key piece of advice: remove all references to tobacco and my problem would be solved. No one in Canada, I was told, wanted to work with someone who specialized in tobacco.
So I dropped the word tobacco. Instead of working for Cuba’s National Tobacco Research Institute, my resume now said I had worked for Cuba’s National Research Institute. I changed my specialty from tobacco to Solanaceae. It worked. Once the offending word was gone, I quickly found employment.
From that experience I learned that not all crops are created equal. Tobacco has been demonized in Canada to such a degree that the skills acquired breeding it are only acceptable if they’re attributed, at least on paper, to the broad family of plants that includes tobacco.
Tobacco isn’t the only crop with a bad reputation. Ask anyone who breeds cannabis, for instance, what their experience in the job market has been like, and you will no doubt hear a similar story. The message to plant breeders is clear: your skills don’t matter; the crop you work with does. I couldn’t disagree more. The skills a breeder acquires are fundamentally important and should never be dismissed simply because they were honed on a crop that’s out of favor.
I began my career in Canada by hiding my expertise in tobacco. But the truth is I’m proud of the work I did with that crop. Lines I helped create are grown commercially to this day and continue to retain the resistance that made them so successful against devastating diseases that once crippled Cuba’s tobacco industry. So tobacco is once again proudly displayed on my resume alongside the skills I gained working with it, and this time it’s there to stay.
