Monthly Archives: October 2015

Pathogens Ruining Your Pinot: Grape Powdery Mildew and Willamette Valley Vineyards

Cracked berries: Grape powdery mildew on chardonnay berries with cracking of berries being a result of heavy infestation.

In the 1960s and 70s Oregon wine makers did something incredible. They began growing pinot grapes in the cold, wet climate of the Pacific Northwest, where it was previously believed they could not be produced. Since then, the Willamette Valley has come to prominence as one of the United States’ premier growing regions, with vineyards harvesting grapes for every kind of wine you can imagine.

However, there are serious challenges to the wine industry in Oregon. A fungus known commonly as grape powdery mildew, which plagues vineyards across the United States, is one of the main culprits. Unlike other places in the United States, the growing season for grapes is completely different in the climate of the the Pacific Northwest. In this environment, traditional strategies for protecting grape harvests from outbreaks of these fungal spores are not as effective.

This is where Lindsey Thiessen comes in. A PhD candidate in Walt Mahaffe’s Botany and Plant Pathology lab, Lindsey studies plant and fungal pathosystems. Pathosystems are the relationships between the disease causing agent (in this case, a fungus) and the host (in this case, the grapes). In order to protect the Oregon wine industry, Lindsey is learning about the ecology of grape powder mildew fungus and grape plants during ‘overwintering’, when the grape buds and fungus go dormant. Lindsey helped devise a spore trapping device for use in the growing season to provide valuable information on fungal threats. This device, along with her own models for potential disease outbreak, should aid vineyard management in developing treatment strategies for their grapes.

Join us tonight at 7PM PST to find out more! You can tune in to 88.7 KBVR or stream the show live online at http://kbvr.com/listen!

Cleistothecia on leaf: Fungal fruiting bodies (cleistothecia, approximately 130 µm diameter) of Erysiphe necator (causal agent of grape powdery mildew) under 20x magnification. Brown/black cleistothecia are mature enough for overwintering, whereas white and yellow fruiting structures are presently being formed.

Sieving: L.T. sieving cleistothecia being collected from leaves in cement mixer-ice water bath.

All photos courtesy of Lindsey Thiessen

Deciphering the Language of the Universe

A diagram demonstrating how information in lake sediment can reveal natural history. Courtesy of Francisco Guerrero

Scientists design experiments to answer a specific question, and usually they already have an informed prediction as to what the answer may be. They set up treatments and make measurements of specific variables that they think will contribute information for the understanding of the problem. In natural systems, however, there are innumerable variables that could also be informative for the system. For Francisco Guerrero, a PhD student in the Department of Forest Engineering, Resources, and Management, the leftover material—the unused information—is essential to the understanding of a natural system but may be overlooked by scientists after a specific outcome. Francisco wants to harness all the information in a natural system, identify patterns, and simulate a complete picture of a forest or a watershed. An application of Francisco’s research in the lab of Jeff Hatten utilizes Information Theory to create a mathematical tool that translates that information into a snapshot of a forest ecosystem as it is evolving, allowing scientists to predict where it is headed and past events that have lead to the current state.

Francisco holds a soil sample to be processed in the lab. Courtesy of Francisco Guerrero

Francisco’s academic journey itself has evolved from early dreams of becoming a TV producer to ecologist to engineer. Passionate in his pursuits, our guest this Sunday loves to chase a challenge. To hear about about Francisco’s research and his unique journey, tune in to 88.7 FM KBVR in Corvallis on Sunday, October 18^th at 7PM PST, or stream the show live online at http://kbvr.com/listen!

Write About Now

And it was at that age… Poetry arrived in search of me.

I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from, from winter or a river.

I don’t know how or when,

No they were not voices, they were not words, nor silence,

But from a street I was summoned,

From the branches of night, abruptly from the others,

Among violent fires,

Or returning alone,

there I was without a face

and it touched me.

– Pablo Neruda

As humans, writing—whether it is fiction, history, of even science and technology—is one of the primary ways in which we communicate and describe the world around us. Tomorrow evening, Sunday, October 10th, André Habet of the School of Writing, Literature, and Film joins us on Inspiration Dissemination to discuss his thesis on rhetoric and composition teaching style in classrooms in Belize.

After falling in love with poetry in High School in Belize, where he was raised, André decided to pursue a creative writing degree in the United States. Now André studies how the process of writing itself is taught in the classroom, something that has a rich literature in the United States, but has been very little attention in the country of Belize. In writing, composition is the form and style of putting a written work together. Different ways of teaching composition in school have different theoretical foundations and different ideological agendas, and these can sometimes have a powerful impact on the way we grow up to view the world around us.

To lean more about André’s research and his personal journey, tune in on Sunday night to 88.7FM KBVR Corvallis at 7PM PST, or stream the show live online at http://kbvr.com/listen!

The Sweetest Genes

Tonight we have the pleasure of speaking to Natalia Salinas who comes all the way from South America to work on producing more (and delicious) strawberries! Think about how often you see strawberries in the grocery store, but strawberries typically only produce one harvest per year. Some of Natalia’s work focus on identifying if the seeds’ DNA have the perpetual flowering characteristic so there are more potential harvests throughout the year. Just as important as quantity is quality; a second aspect of Natalia’s work is searching DNA markers to try and predict the sugar content in strawberries.

Ideally growers would like many harvests and sweeter strawberries, so tune in tonight at 7PM Pacific time to 88.7FM KBVR Corvallis or stream the show live at http://kbvr.com/listen to find out how Natalia can help your next milkshake be even more delicious!

Natalia is working to amplify the DNA sequences in strawberries to identify desirable traits.

The fruits of Natalia’s labor. Yum!