Latest News

"Abigail (Abbie) Stack, alumna of the Plant Pathology Graduate Group at UC Davis and currently working at Bayer Crop Science, won the Excellence in Industry Award at the 2024 Plant Health meeting.

On Wednesday 1/25/2023 Lee Hazeltine, Laura Gunderson and Feliciano from integrazers.com brought 1,300 sheep through the levee gate to help with weeding the farm. They are being enclosed in 5-10 acre sections at a time and are able to eat through vineyard, orchard, and open ground. The areas they have munched through looks freshly mowed! They are even eating thistles and weeds between trees where tractors cannot reach.

Cassandra Swett receives the 2022 Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award. The Graduate Program Advising and Mentoring Award recognizes Professors for their commitment to grad students. 

See the original article Here. 

Krishna Subbarao receives the LSU College of Agriculture’s 2022 Outstanding Alumni Award! The Outstanding Alumni Award recognizes and honors graduates for their outstanding leadership and significant contributions in their career, public service and/or volunteer activities. He will receive this Award at a ceremony on November 4th in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

A field day held September 6 at UCDavis provided preliminary findings on managing Pierce's Disease (PD) in grapevines. This research, headed by Akif Eskalen, represents the first year of a three-year effort to evaluate the effectiveness of four different biopesticides in dealing with PD. Currently, only one of these four biopesticides is available on the market. If successful, this research trial could generate the data necessary for the commercialization of new biopesticides, giving grapegrowers more tools for controlling PD in their crops.

On August 17, the Department of Plant Pathology hosted Vegetable Disease Field Day to discuss tomato and crop rotation research being conducted in plant pathology fields on campus. More than 70 people attended the English session, which was led by Cassandra Swett and included stops at three locations.

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QBE graduate Dr. Sara Garcia Figuera was the guest on the most recent episode of APS's Plantopia podcast. She talked to host Jim Bradeen about her career path and her interdisciplinary work at UC Davis on citrus HLB.

Listen to the podcast here

Marcelo Bustamante, a graduate student in Eskalen Lab, received Second Place for Best Poster in the students competition category at the 12th International Workshop on Grapevine Trunk Diseases in Mikulov, Czech Republic.  The title of the poster was "Investigating the role of Fusarium spp. on young vine decline in California", by the authors Marcelo I. Bustamante, Karina Elfar, Molly Arreguin, Rhonda J. Smith, Larry J. Bettiga, Tian Tian, Gabriel A.

Please see this opportunity in the Plant Pathology Department for Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension: https://recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF05013 . Please apply completely by August 31, 2022 for full consideration.

Congratulations to Gitta Coaker in receiving the 2022 Noel T. Keen Award for Research Excellence in Molecular Plant Pathology from the American Phytopathological Society​. The award is given biennially (beginning in 2020) in recognition of outstanding contributions to regulatory plant pathology, crop security, and trade enhancement efforts by APS members. 

UC Davis plant geneticist Pam Ronald has been named the recipient of the 2022 International Wolf Prize in Agriculture, given by the Jerusalem-based Wolf Foundation in recognition of her “pioneering work on disease resistance and environmental stress tolerance in rice.”

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Deborah Golino, FPS Director, to Retire in July 2021

After 27 years of service, Foundation Plant Services’ (FPS) Director and Cooperative Extension Specialist, Dr. Deborah Golino will retire on July 1, 2021. Since 1994, Dr. Golino has been the Director of FPS, a self-supporting service unit in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at University of California, Davis. FPS is dedicated to the distribution of disease-tested, true-to-identity plant materials with programs for grapes, strawberries, fruit trees, nut trees, sweet potatoes, and roses.

We thank you, Jovita, for your many years of dedicated service to our department.  You joined us in 2002 during a challenging time, and came in and transformed our laboratory services into a modern and efficient facility.  All of us in the research labs rely upon and greatly appreciate your outstanding service. You brighten our day with your positive spirit and cheerful greeting. We will miss you, but wish you all the best in your retirement. All our best~ Rick

An Open Door

Bryce is retiring!