Photos

As you can see I have posted a slide show above of a trip Curtis and I went on yesterday to the coast. I have also put a slide show of Oregon spring flowers in the photography section of this blog (see links to the left). Enjoy!

Inoculations

this first photo (above) shows my plants in the midst of the inoculation process
the second picture (below) shows the different growth morphologies of three isolates from the same species, it's difficult to see in the picture how dramatic the differences are, but if you click on it the picture will enlarge and you can see that the left plate is a faster growing flat isolates and the right plate is slower growing and the top and right plates have a raised fluffy morphology.
This last picture (below) shows my little plants outside post inoculation, they look like little Christmas trees with all those colourful clips, but sadly they are just waiting to die.

Today I inoculated 9 plants with my Phytophthora spp as another practice run before the field experiments begin. I tried two different methods; zoospores and agar, to see which works best and to determine whether it really matters which method I use. Here are a few photos of the inoculuation in progress.

Summer Class

I'm now all done with classes for this term, I have no final exams and I've finished my term project for statistics. I have almost 3 weeks off from classes before the summer term starts so I will be able to get some good work done on the research front without homework and classes getting in the way. This summer I'm taking a class called Plant Disease Diagnosis with 11 Botany students. It looks like a great class, it's all field trips and lab analysis. Assignments will be unknown diseased plant samples and we will have to diagnose the diseases. We are going all over Oregon to visit all kinds of crops from Christmas trees to mint farms with vegetables and fruits in between. For more details on the fun trips I'll be going on check out this website for the class and click on the Syllabus link. It will be particularly good since all the class trips and labs will be on Thursdays and Friday mornings so the remainder of the week will be free of interruptions.

Plants are coming

Finally I have received confirmation that 2 orders for rhodies have gone through so I expect to have the first batch next week and I'll be able to begin inoculating. Hurrah! This first experiment will be a little different from those I have been working on for the field as I will be using dip inoculation which will result in multiple infection sites over the whole plant and I will be working in the quarantine chamber for this too so I am getting smaller plants to fit more in. The result will hopefully be extremely sick plants within 10 days so that I can then detach some leaves and measure the lesion area on them. The plant is to get this little dip experiment underway and mostly done this month and then begin the first farm experiment some time in July. I'm not sure how this will work out but since classes finish this week I will have more time to work on it.

Frustration and Potential

I am finding it difficult to obtain the plants I need in sufficient quantities. In the past I have worked with hops which are incredibly easy to cultivate from cuttings and grow very quickly. I also have worked with E. coli which equally is easy to grow and potentially give you answers overnight. Now I am getting used to working with Rhododendrons and Oomycetes and everything is a lot slower. I feel like I have been here almost a year and I'm only just ready to begin my first field experiment and I still don't have the plants I need and I want to begin in July. I really don't want to push this back another season to the Fall.

On the more positive side I have been given the opportunity to do some additional work to supplement a colleague's data working with P. ramorum. This will be exciting for me as I will gain experience working in containment with this pathogen. But yet again I am in need of additional plants of specific cultivars and of a certain size and it is difficult to find nurseries who can supply me with the numbers I need in the short time frame that I have.

Books

This week I bought 4 very nice, very expensive big hard cover text books from amazon! I have been putting off buying any text books for a while until I was sure exactly which books were the best and would be the most valuable to me. Here are the ones I decided upon:

Plant pathology 5th ed. by AgriosPlant Disease Epidemics by Madden, Hughes and van den Bosch

Phytophthora Diseases Worldwide by Erwin and Ribeiro

Design of Experiments: Statistical Principles of Research Design and Analysis by Kuehl

Sick Rhodies

Earlier in the year I inoculated some plants in the greenhouse with a foliar wound method and this plant has developed beautiful necrotic symptoms on the axial buds!