Posted: November 23, 2021
The Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology welcomes new visiting scholar, Diana Njuguna, who recently joined the Esker lab.
Diana Njuguna
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The Department of Plant Pathology and Environmental Microbiology welcomes new visiting scholar, Diana Njuguna, who recently joined the Esker lab.
Njuguna is a third-year undergraduate student working towards a bachelor’s degree in agricultural sciences at EARTH University, Costa Rica.
She is currently working on projects with plant pathology graduate students Karen Luong and Ryan Spelman.
Njuguna’s work with Luong includes isolation of pathogens from soybean, DNA extraction and running gel electrophoresis. This work monitors the diversity of the pathogens across the region and assists in creating different dilutions of fungicides to monitor their effectiveness and resistance of the fungicides in different soybean cultivars.
Spelman’s project involves the influence of cover crops on the Fusarium pathogen in corn. Research activities include isolating infected kernels, growing them into different media until they’re able to get a single spore isolate of Fusarium for inoculation, and fieldwork to study different cover crops in the region.
After graduation, Njuguna plans to gain job experience before starting her master’s degree in 2024.
