Might be of interest.
For YETI
Debabrata Phukon
---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Padmaparna Ghosh <ghoshp@xxxxxx>
Date: Mon, May 16, 2022, 7:45 PM
Subject: Lecture on plant pathology
To: <meet.yeti@xxxxxxxxx>
Hello, this might be of interest?
Lecture by Professor Jean Ristaino on history and pathology of the potato
blight.
BOOK HERE: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/293924575317
*Phytophthora infestans*, was the causal agent of the potato “plague” that
killed the Irish potato crop. In 1835, the HMS Beagle traveled to the
island of Chiloé where Darwin discovered and sent back to Cambridge, wild
species of potato. Darwin's interest in the potato and potato late blight
spanned four decades.
We have used natural history collections and herbarium specimens to
identify and track the spread of *P. infestans*. We identified the famine
lineage in historic specimens, reputing a previous incorrect strain
identification done only with modern lineages. The FAM-1 lineage caused
both US and European historic outbreaks, was present globally for over 140
years and shared allelic diversity with the oldest specimens collected in
Colombia. Population genomics data from historic* P. infestans* also links
the ancestral FAM-1 lineage to *P. andina*, a sister species found in the
Andes. We have developed a surveillance and mapping system ( USAblight.org)
to report modern disease outbreaks and are developing new technologies that
combine sensors, bioinformatics and geospatial surveillance tools to
observe, contain and limit outbreaks of this important plant disease.
Our speaker, Dr. Jean Ristaino <https://ristainolab.cals.ncsu.edu/>, is a
William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor in the Department of
Entomology and Plant Pathology at North Carolina State University. She
works on the population genetics of the pathogen that caused the Irish
famine* Phytophthora infestans* and studies the population structure and
epidemiology of modern day and historic late blight outbreaks. Her lab
studies the impact of migration, recombination and hybridization on the
evolution of *Phytophthora* species. She developed pioneering research
techniques for use of 150-year-old herbarium specimens to track epidemics.
She currently directs the Emerging Plant Disease and Global Food Security
cluster at NC State. In 2018, she was awarded a Fulbright Research Scholar
Award in at the University of Catania in Sicily and in 2022 was awarded a
second Fulbright Award to work on *Phytophthora* in Ireland.
