A University of Florida professor has been recognized with the highest honor the Florida State Horticultural Society bestows for his work that includes research to get more oil from plants to produce biodiesel.

This article from the school’s newspaper, InsideUF, says Wagner Vendrame, an associate professor of environmental horticulture at the University of Florida’s Tropical Research and Education Center, Homestead, picked up the society’s Presidential Gold Medal Award:

Presented to Vendrame at the society’s annual meeting this summer, the award is the most prestigious honor from the FSHS, given to the individual whose work published in the previous five years of the Proceedings of the Florida State Horticultural Society has contributed the most to the Sunshine State’s horticulture sciences.

Vendrame joined UF in 2001 and has more than 16 years of experience in plant micropropagation and biotechnology. His research program involves production and conservation of plants using tissue culture, molecular biology and cryopreservation techniques.

Vendrame is well known for his work propagating selected hybrids of the jatropha nut, which has some great potential in the biodiesel business.