Plant pathologist Jean Ristaino hunts down crop-threatening diseases all over the world. Last year, in the span of two months, she visited India, Uganda, and Taiwan to help colleagues track the fungus Phytophthora infestans, which infects tomatoes and potatoes and caused numerous famines in 19th-century Europe. Ristaino tracks the pathogen’s modern march using farmers’ online reports of outbreaks of the disease, called late blight; then she travels to those locations to collect fungal samples.
Continue to article and discussion...
No comments:
Post a Comment