Lance Cadle-Davidson
Adjunct Assistant Professor

Address, Phone, Fax

E-Mail: led8@cornell.edu

2003 PhD, Plant Pathology, Cornell University

Division of Effort
Research - 100%, Genomics and pathogenesis of fungal diseases of grapevine.

Complete CV – html | pdf

My research program addresses pathogenesis of economically important fungal pathogens of grapevine.  The main pathosystems we focus on involve Botrytis cinerea and Uncinula necator (powdery mildew), the necrotrophic rotter and the stealthy biotroph, respectively.  Our goal is to use genetic, genomic, proteomic, and epidemiological approaches to decipher the molecular requirements for compatibility.  We are aided in this pursuit by temporal incompatibility in the fruit for both pathogens: Botytis infects early but waits quiescently while the immature fruit develops until a certain point late in fruit development when it is finally able to flex its pathogenic muscles and destroy the fruit; Uncinula infects early, causes symptoms early, and then at a very specific time in fruit development is neither able to colonize the host any further nor initiate new infections.

We are also developing publicly available tools for studying both the pathogen and the host.  These include systems for global expression analysis and random mutagenesis libraries.   In addition, we aim to utilize the natural variation contained in the PGRU Vitis germplasm collection to identify novel sources of resistance to a wide array of fungal pathogens.

Professional Societies
American Phytopathological Society