Keeping Pathogens Out: Best Practices to Prevent Phytophthora in Native Habitats

Implementing best management practices in restoration nurseries are a key component to prevent the introduction of devastating pathogens into native ecosystems. In this talk we will discuss the principles of the Accreditation to Improve Restoration (AIR) program, initiated as means to guarantee the production of healthy and pathogen free native nursery stock for restoration purposes.
Dr. Johanna Del Castillo is an Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension, specialized in greenhouse and nursery crops, in the Department of Plant Pathology at UC Davis. Since 2020, she initiated the Greenhouse and Nursery Pathology research program. As the principal investigator, she is interested in developing and improving sustainable solutions for disease control through studies of fungal and oomycete pathogens affecting greenhouse and nursery crops. Before this position, she worked as an Assistant Project Scientist at UC Davis, and at Bayer Crop Sciences with biological controls. As a post-doctoral scholar at UC Davis and at the University of Maryland, she studied the plant health effect of implementing reduced irrigation on greenhouse crops.
Del Castillo obtained her Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from Michigan State University, where she worked at characterizing Pythium species from ornamental crops in the state, and her undergraduate and master’s degree from Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.