Local Adaptation of Crop Landraces

Research Summary:

Crop landraces are adapted to a wide range of biotic and abiotic stressors, giving rise to within species’ genetic and phenotypic diversity. I will discuss results from several projects where I use the natural diversity present in landrace systems to understand more about crop adaption to environment and the trade-offs that may be associated with these adaptive strategies. 

About the Speaker:

Chloee McLaughlin is a PhD candidate in the Plant Biology program. She is co-advised by Jesse Lasky and Ruairidh Sawers and uses landraces to study local adaption in native cereal crop systems, with a specific focus on sorghum and maize. Prior to coming to Penn State, she completed a bachelor of science at the University of Florida, majoring in Botany and minoring in wildlife ecology and conservation. At UF, she worked in Dave Clark’s coleus breeding lab and bred sweet basil cultivars for downy mildew resistance. She is co-inventor of the downy mildew resistant basil cultivar “Besto Pesto”, sold through the company Proven Winners. She also has interned with the Smithsonian Gardens, where she worked on maintenance and virus testing of their living orchid collection, which has over 6,000 specimens of orchids. 

Contact

Jesse Lasky
jrl35@psu.edu