Webinar Summary
Plant pathologists have long addressed the impact of environmental conditions in shaping disease outbreaks; nevertheless, how abrupt, frequent changes in climatic patterns might alter disease trajectories, as well as their implications for the host-pathogen arms race, are less well recognized. In this webinar, I will present our recent findings on the adaptation strategies that allow endemic pathogens to dynamically adjust to environmental variations and to the agricultural settings on seasonal timescales.
Speaker
Neha Potnis is an Endowed Associate Professor in the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology. Neha earned BS and MS in Microbiology from India and then completed PhD in Xanthomonas effectors and genomics from University of Florida. She later worked as a postdoc in UF on human pathogens (Salmonella) on plants and then another postdoc in USDA-Charleston, US vegetable lab to focus on finding novel sources of resistance in pepper against bacterial diseases. She joined as a faculty in 2016 in Auburn University as a cluster hire in Omics. Her program looks at the molecular basis of plant-pathogen-microbiome-environment interactions, with a focus on Xanthomonas and Pseudomonas pathogens. She is a recipient of the NSF-CAREER award and FFAR New Innovator award. Her work integrates omics tools to address the fundamentals of plant-pathogen interactions, more specifically, how pathogen adapts to a specific host and to the climatic shifts.
