The home garden continues to deliver exciting fungi! This isn’t just a fly 🪰. Look closely and you’ll see that while its legs are firmly wrapped around the leaf, it is frozen and spores are bursting from its body 🧟‍♀️.

And one more with UMN CFANS collaborators out this week. This paper was led by Dr. Akli Zarouri in the lab of Dr. Abdennour Abbas. pubs.rsc.org/en/content/a...

Thanks for the collaboration with your group @badgercropdoc.bsky.social! Check out Amit Sharma's new review on C. minitans www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This is a fun one, spotted at home. Do you know what it is? Growing in mulch and gelatinous on the inside… I could tell there were older ones nearby 👃🪰

We see dead (well, dying) plants 💀! This is a good thing when they are located in research trials… Plant early dying and signs and symptoms of black dot are appearing in trials located in Becker MN. Jasper’s inoculum worked like a charm! 🥔⚫️🍄! @umnplantpath.bsky.social

The lab was joined by Mirelys Estopinales via the SOAR REEU program this summer. Today, she presented her work with grad student mentor, Hunter, at the UMN Undergraduate Research Expo. We will miss her, appreciate her work, and are grateful for the opportunity to introduce students to ag. research!

So great to see lab members discussing their work on the biology and management of soilborne fungi at #planthealth2025. I overhead helpful exchanges and introductions 👀🌱. Stop by posters 037, 149, and 271 to learn more about their work or to pick up a business card. One more today, P-406 at 10:15!

Recovering samples from the *final field season* of Hunter’s trial at the NWROC.

Fungi in the “wild”! Many chanterelles spotted while at my childhood home in AR today 🤤

Celebrating PI Megan McCaghey and grad student Jasper Tao, who won the Lafayette Frederick Diversity in Mentoring Award! @plantdisease.bsky.social @mnsoilfungi.bsky.social

Planting prep continues! Hunter, MSc student, led pre-plant winter rye cover crop biomass sampling this morning.

The plots are infested, and we’re crossing our fingers for black dot 🥔🤒🤞.

Plants Get Sick Too (PLPA 1005) is currently enrolling students for fall 2025. Learn how microbes shape our agricultural and natural systems- while checking off the liberal arts biosci requirement: youtu.be/84P6eHP9wkU?...

We are hiring! Applications will be reviewed upon submission. We look forward to working with a couple new UMN undergraduate students this summer. This is a great chance to “get your feet wet” in plant pathology research both in the field and lab 🌱🚜. Please share!

Yesterday, we joined the Rosen, Sharma, and Miao labs to plant our large integrated management trial in potato. MAST student, Rai (pictured) was a big help! The disease component of this trial will be managed by first year graduate student, Jasper Tao 🥔🍄.

Big congratulations to SBFO Lab graduate students, Hsuan-Fu Wang and Hunter Kluegel on their PLPA Department travel awards 🎉! Nice work 👏!!

A few highlights from this past weekend at Itasca Biological Station (via students and instructors). We had an awesome group of interdisciplinary health science students at Ecohealth, and I was glad to attend as a guest lecturer on plant health. #onehealth #planthealthisyourhealth