DURHAM, N.C., June 19 -- North Carolina State University issued the following press release:
By Lara Ivanitch
Spoorti Gandhadmath carefully placed 3.5-inch pots on a shelf in a growth chamber. Within seven days of sowing, newly sprouted leaves had fully emerged from each of the carefully selected seeds, representing diverse cotton genotypes.
Gandhadmath, a doctoral student in crop science at NCState University, then inoculated the seedlings with race 18 of the cotton bacterial blight pathogen as part of her work in the Kuraparthy Lab. Seven days after that, she checked the tiny leaves for water-soaked spots that indicated infection, or dry, dead patches that revealed the plant had resistance to this particularly virulent strain of blight...