Sharifa Crandall
Role in Phytobiomes Alliance
Affiliation
Position
Assistant Professor, Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology
Soilborne Disease Ecology Program
Research Interests
- Environmental disturbance as a driver of phytobiome disease dynamics.
- Genomic diversity and function as a tool to rapidly detect and reveal fungal and oomycete pathogenesis.
- Global and local dispersal of soil microbiomes and the implications for plant health.
Current Phytobiomes-related Projects
- The impact of phenotype and environment on microbial community diversity and structure to predict plant disease in wine grapes (Funding: NSF-GRFP – Fellowship Program).
- Seed microbiome community assembly to improve germination using functional metagenomics (Funding: USDA-NIFA Agricultural Microbiomes Program).
- Improving soil health in organic vegetable production in high tunnel/greenhouse systems using soilborne pathogen diagnostics and sustainable technologies (Funding: USDA-NIFA Organic Transitions Program).
- Airborne dispersal of Fusarium soilborne pathogens and associated soil microbiomes to measure dispersal and varying geographic scales (USDA-ARS).
- Soilborne pathogen dispersal and assessment: building a remote sensing-based global surveillance system for plant disease (Funding: NASA-ROSES Interdisciplinary Science).