We received good news that Manjari requires more space for her EPG work, so the group made another Faraday cage.
Roy graduates
Roy L. Davis II becomes Graduate I,
and departs from the department.
Later, Dr. Davis looks back and reflects.
Roy’s soilborne inoculum work
Roy spent plenty of time in the laboratory quantifying Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum (Fov) DNA from field soil, and some of his work is now reported in a Plant Disease publication: https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-08-21-1664-RE
The work’s objective was to describe spatial variability in Fov inoculum density in the field, because that variation is hypothesized to affect risk of cotton plants expressing Fusarium wilt disease. Much of Roy’s report concerns development of the quantification method, which targets the Fov race affecting the selected field sites. Roy discovered that inoculum density varies across the field space by orders of magnitude (shown in the figure below, where “inoculum level” is a relative logarithmic scale), and by observing it at multiple time points he noticed a temporal pattern: inoculum density trajectory depends on growth resource type and availability, which depends on prior inoculum density. Roy is now finishing documentation of that cycle in this system.
Learning About EPG
Manjari explaining the basic principles of EPG to Maggie.
2022 Graduate Research Showcase
Roy, Jensen, Manjari, and Tim all presented posters of their research at the 2022 PLPM Graduate Research Showcase.
Horizontal Movement of Inoculum
Jensen and Maggie in the process of running a horizontal column.
Maggie at Work
Maggie is hard at work using aseptic techniques for plating effluent from a horizontal column run.
Timothy Martin
About Me
I am a first year PhD student at Texas A&M University. I graduated from St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN in 2017 with a B.A. in Biology. I then went to Illinois State University where I completed a M.S. in plant ecology in 2021 under the direction of Dr. Victoria Borowicz with a thesis titled “In Defense of Plants: Salicylic Acid in a Host-Parasite-Pathogen System.” During which time I completed a graduate certificate in geographic information systems.
I am interested in the ecological factors impacting pathogenesis, especially as it relates to spatial patterns of pathogen interaction in both agricultural and natural settings. In the Chappell lab, I have been working on characterizing the environment around cotton fleahopper collection sites to determine if the land use in areas surrounding fleahopper populations impacts the abundance of fleahoppers.
2022 Conference on Soilborne Plant Pathogens
Roy was invited to present his work at the Conference on Soilborne Plant Pathogens held virtually on March 22 and 23, 2022. He presented research related to his work with the spatial and temporal variation of FOV4. Roy was also one of four recipients of the Martin Stoner Memorial Fellowship.
2022 Student Research Week
Roy presented his research at the 2022 Student Research Week (SRW) held at the Memorial Students Center at Texas A&M University. His presentation won first place in the Graduate Oral Presentations in the Agriculture division.
