Kelly S. Allen has trained in general plant pathology, molecular biology and biochemistry. She began her graduate research focusing on basil downy mildew in 2015, throughout which time she has refined protocols for collecting and propagating the basil downy mildew pathogen Peronospora belbahrii. Her research projects have included fungicide and biological control trials for disease management of basil downy mildew and Fusarium wilt of basil, investigating long-term survival of P. belbahrii sporangia, and identifying and validating candidate genes involved in basil downy mildew resistance and P. belbahrii virulence from meta transcriptomic data. Results of these projects have been presented at American Phytopathological Society conferences, USDA NIFA Basil Workshops, and UMass Extension meetings, and are being prepared and submitted to peer-revied journals and extension publications.
PUBLICATIONS
Allen KS, DeIulio GA, Pyne R, Maman J, Guo L, Wick RL, Simon J, Gershenson A, Ma L-J. 2022, Identification of novel basil downy mildew resistance genes using de novo comparative transcriptomics. (Submitted to New Phytologist, pdf is available on bioRxiv)
Martínez-Soto D, Yu H, Allen KS, Ma L-J*. 2022, Differential colonization of the plant vasculature between endophytic versus pathogenic Fusarium oxysporum MPMI (Under review, pdf is available)