SIPS Research

LakeEffect, the first winter malting barley released by the Cornell Small Grains Breeding Program, is set to take the New York craft beverage industry by storm. The new variety produces high yields, is disease resistant and has a good malting profile. “What’s truly remarkable is that we took this from first cross to commercial release in just seven years, which is incredibly fast to move a new variety to market,” said Mark Sorrells, professor of plant breeding and genetics in Cornell’s School of Integrative Plant Science (SIPS) in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, who led the breeding effort. 

The Cornell-developed “PhytoPatholoBot” detects spectral signatures of three kinds of devastating grape diseases – powdery mildew, downy mildew and grapevine leafroll virus – leading to early management of pathogens without needing farmworkers to spot them. Ultimately, data collected by such robots will help to ground-truth NASA satellite data that could one day detect plant diseases from space.

Applied roboticist Yu Jiang, assistant professor the Horticulture Section of the School of Integrative Science, developed the PhytoPatholoBot with doctoral student Ertai Liu and plant pathologist Katie Gold, with funding from NASA Acres and U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture  (NIFA) and VitisGen3.

The $2.3 million project, funded by the National Science Foundation, will aid grape growers and winemakers as they cope with increasingly erratic climate conditions by uncovering the most adaptable varieties.  Jason Londo, associate professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science’s Horticulture Section, leads a multi-institutional team exploring how genetically identical grapevines adapt to differences in temperature, humidity, soils and other environmental factors in New York, Missouri and South Dakota.

NY is the top beet-producing state, thanks in part to grower support from Cornell researchers working with UV light to suppress the leaf spot fungus using drone images to spot-treat infected plants rather than spraying entire fields. These light treatments may be used in conventional beet production as well as in organic systems where synthetic fungicides are not permitted.

A fungus, Cercospora causes the ugly leaf spots on beets sold into the fresh market, said Sarah Pethybridge, associate professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science’s Plant Pathology and Plant-Microbe Biology Section at Cornell AgriTech. The disease can also defoliate the plants, making it more difficult for mechanical harvesters to pull the vegetables from the soil by their tops, she said.

It can grow an inch or two a day, produce nearly a million seeds and emerge at almost any point in the growing season. Waterhemp is among the most destructive weeds U.S. growers contend with, and new research has confirmed that populations in New York state are resistant to one of the most common herbicides. Waterhemp samples from Seneca County soybean fields were five to 12 times more resistant to glyphosate than controls. 

“Having the confirmation of this resistance in New York gives us the opportunity to spread the message that we should use these chemistries more judiciously and diversify our weed control practices,” said first author Vipan Kumar, associate professor in the Soil and Crop Sciences Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science.

From developing nutrient-dense corn varieties and tasty, disease-resistant tomatoes to refining growing practices to make farming more sustainable and profitable for growers, our researchers are on the cutting edge of crop production and food security. “Those of us who uncover scientific discoveries, develop better varieties and farming practices, and distribute that knowledge to our growers are honored to be part of the community that supports food systems and wellbeing, in New York and around the globe,” said Margaret Smith, professor in the Plant Breeding and Genetics Section of the School of Integrative Science and director of the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station (Cornell AES), which manages a statewide network of research farms and greenhouses supporting our research.

Plants grow stems, leaves and petals in a perfect pattern again and again. A new Cornell study shows that even in this precise, patterned formation in plants, gene activity inside individual cells is far more chaotic than it appears from the outside. While individual cells behave inconsistently, groups of cells work together to smooth out the noise, creating a stable, collective signal that the plant can use to guide development.  “The organism can use this randomness when it wants to and ignore it when it doesn’t,” said Adrienne Roeder, professor in the Plant Biology Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science. “That’s super powerful.”

While a staple in much of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, most maize varieties fall dangerously short in key nutrients like vitamin A and vitamin E.  Rather than engineer a solution in the lab, Michael Gore, professor in Plant Breeding and Genetics Section, turned to maize itself.  Over 15 years, Gore's lab "scanned thousands of maize varieties from around the globe. Using high-resolution mapping and advanced gene sequencing, they uncovered rare but powerful variants that naturally produce higher levels of beta-carotene, the precursor to vitamin A. Some of these maize lines, bright orange and brimming with nutrients, are now growing in Zambian fields through collaborations with HarvestPlus and CIMMYT," reports SeedWorld. “We didn’t need to invent a miracle,” Gore said. “We just had to listen to what maize already knew.”

Researchers at Cornell have discovered a new grape downy mildew resistance gene – giving the wine and grape industry a powerful new tool to combat this devastating disease. “Of the downy mildew resistance genes found in the world to date, this is one of the strongest,” said Lance Cadle-Davidson, adjunct professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and a research plant pathologist with the USDA’s Grape Genetics Research Unit in Geneva. “The discovery could help breeders develop more resistant grape varieties.”

Imagine if a plant in a farmer’s field could warn a grower that it needs water? Or if a farmer could signal to plants that dry weather lies ahead. Margaret Frank, associate professor in the Plant Biology Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science, is one of the collaborators advancing our understanding of such two-way communication with plants through the efforts of the Center for Research on Programmable Plant Systems (CROPPS), which is funded by a five-year, $25 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant.