Jan Leach
Role in Phytobiomes Alliance
Board of Directors, Controlled Environment Working Group, Coordinating Committee
Affiliation
Position
Professor of Plant Pathology; Associate Dean for Research, College of Agricultural Sciences
Research Interests
- Plant/microbe/insect/environment interactions
- Molecular plant-microbe interactions
- Plant disease resistance
Website
Additional Links
Jan.Leach[at]colostate.edu
Current Phytobiomes-related Projects
Role of the Russian wheat aphid microbiome in aphid virulence to wheat.
Insect-microbe associations that influence the impact of plant defenses are likely widespread. We are studying how these associations function to overcome plant defenses in both wheat as well as other aphid-bacteria-plant systems.
Impacts of high temperatures on rice disease and resistance.
Warming in the climate system impacts plant biology in many ways, including how plants respond to pathogens. Many plant diseases are predicted to intensify as environmental temperatures increase, and many widely used single gene sources of disease resistance (R genes) are less effective at high temperatures. We are studying how high temperature impacts disease and resistance using rice and the bacterial blight pathogen as a system.