Led by Mary Hausbeck from the MSU department of Plant, Soil, and Microbial Sciences, the Michigan research team will collaborate with researchers from 7 other U.S. institutions to create new methods to manage the spread and outbreak of downy mildew, which has become resistant to many of the different fungicides over the years.
The 7 other institutions involved in this project are:
Scientists from these different institutions have a wide range of research areas including plant pathologists, plant breeders, social scientists, and economists. These researchers will benefit from recent advances in the fields of genomics and molecular biology that will allow them to design new diagnostic tools to use in identifying and tracking the spread of the downy mildew pathogen. The researchers will be focusing on creating methods that can detect the presence of the pathogen early, while it is still in the air, and is not yet a problem.
Along with creating new methods of combating the mildew, the plant breeders will work to develop new varieties of some of the most severely threatened crops (such as cucumbers, basil, and spinach) that will be resistant to the pathogen.
Dr. Hausbeck explained that: “By sharing our expertise, we’re going to have a team capable of addressing the various aspects of this pathogen, rather than each of us working by ourselves. We want to provide growers with better diagnostic tools and management strategies that will reduce the risk of downy mildew and improve the security of these crops. I know we can improve what we’ve been doing, and these new resources and the expertise of this team will let us do that.”Michigan State University is a multimillion dollar research marketplace.
In the 2015 fiscal year, the university received more than $49.7 million in funding from the NIH, which additional grants and donations being received from other public and private donors. This funding helps the university establish new research buildings and provides researchers with the needed funding to conduct ground-breaking research projects. Read the articles below to learn more about the research products at Michigan State University that are benefiting from this funding:
MSU Constructing New $15 Million Research Building
MSU Biochemist Studies Obesity Paradox in Yeast
Regenerating Bones at Michigan State University
MSU Group Builds a Better Toxin Receptor
Interested in marketing lab products and supplies to active life science researchers in the well-funded MSU marketplace? If so, exhibit at the upcoming BioResearch Product Faire™ Event in East Lansing coming up on July 27, 2016. This event brings together hundreds of life science suppliers with researchers, PI's, grad students, lab managers, professors, purchasing agents and other lab staff interested in finding the best and newest equipment and technologies to use in their lab. The 2015 event saw more than 220 attendees from 19 different research buildings and 29 on-campus departments.