Lab News

Gadhave earns ‘new innovator’ research award from Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research

We are excited to welcome Dr. Arinder Arora, who joined our lab as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in April 2024. Dr. Arora earned his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, in 2015 and brings over 14 years of extensive research experience. His expertise spans RNAi, paratransgenesis, CRISPR, and microparticle-based delivery systems for pest management in field applications. We’re thrilled to have Dr. Arora on board!

Dr Surender Kumar joined our lab as a postdoctoral research associate on February 9th. Dr Kumar graduated from Council of Scientific and Industrial Research-Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology (CSIR-IHBT), Palampur, India in 2017. He has over 6 years of postdoctoral experience in the areas of virology and molecular biology, including 3 years at the Volcani Center in Israel. Welcome, Dr Kumar.

Our new paper recently published in Frontiers in Plant Science in collaboration with The Kurouski Lab at Texas A&M University demonstrates how Raman Spectroscopy (RS) can offer a promising solution for early diagnosis of tomato spotted wilt (TSW) disease at the strains level. The disease is caused by tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) and novel strains of the virus appear to produce characteristic and distinct symptoms in various tomato cultivars, which RS is capable of detecting. This approach could potentially be used to devise timely disease intervention strategies.

Our work on the transmission biology of novel resistance-breaking (RB) strains of tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) was recently published in Frontiers in Microbiology journal. While TSWV RB strains have been reported worldwide (in Texas by our lab earlier this year), this is the first comprehensive study on thrips transmission of these strains. The study demonstrates how vector-imposed selection pressure, besides the one imposed by resistant cultivars, may contribute to the worldwide emergence of RB strains.