A professor and her team of student researchers have dried their tears and are working to regroup and rebuild their project after a greenhouse fire destroyed all of their plants last month.

Diane Ullman, of the Department of Entomology and Nematology, has spent the last three decades studying a tiny, flying insect, the Western flower thrip, and its role in transmitting viruses between plants.

Ullman, a graduate student, a post-doctoral student and several undergrads had been working with tomato plants in the greenhouse off Orchard Park Drive. Then came the fire, Jan. 21, sparked by an electrical short. Some of the plants survived but were so damaged by the fire’s heat that they died a short time later.

“Really, I never would have thought about a greenhouse burning down,” she said. “It wasn’t on my radar at all.”

Ullman leads a nationwide group from seven universities researching how tomato plants can be made more resistant to the Western flower thrips and viruses in the genus Tospovirus that the thrips spread when feeding.

One possible solution lies in the tiny “hairs,” called trichomes, of some tomato leaves. The hairs excrete a sugar that repels the thrips.

“We’ve made some really important findings,” Ullman said. “By the time we reach the end of the grant I’m sure we’ll be releasing new tomato lines.”

Her work is important because the viruses spread by thrips can infect more than 900 plant species, damaging lettuce, peppers, tomatoes, leafy greens, ornamental plants and more.

“It’s a global problem,” she said.

She’s halfway through a five-year federal grant to study the issue and “create sustainable strategies for managing the insect and the viruses it transmits.”

That the UC Davis greenhouse is part of a national study is both good and bad: Ullman’s lab has been collaborating with other researchers across the nation, so the greenhouse fire impacts the entire project. But it also means she can get up and running again more quickly, as other researchers can send her seeds for plants she needs that aren’t commercially available.

“My colleagues were wonderful about providing the seeds we needed to get our research back on line,” she said. “Otherwise our recovery would have been much more difficult.”

Ullman said she should be back in business in a month or two. That’s a short blip when you’ve been studying the issue since 1987, but it’s little consolation for students rushing to finish degrees, she said.

“There were some tears, for sure,” she said. “Losing something you’ve been working on for months when you’re a graduate student or a post-doc — you don’t have that much time, and to lose it is pretty devastating.”

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