\u201cIt\u2019s beautiful to me,\u201d says plant pathologist Abby Beissinger of specimens that would elicit \u201cOooh, gross!\u201d sounds from 99% of the population. Commercial growers and home gardeners bring or mail her samples of plants they suspect are sick with pests or disease. She often goes microscopic, drilling down to a cellular level to make a diagnosis.<\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing what emerges is super exciting,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd here\u2019s why. Each pathogen looks so different. With fungal spores, it\u2019s not that one\u2019s a circle and one\u2019s a zigzag; one will look like a tadpole, and one looks like a crystal ball. It\u2019s this whole world we don\u2019t have access to unless we have bionic eyeballs \u2014 or a microscope.\u201d<\/p>\n
Admittedly \u201cexciting\u201d and \u201cbeautiful\u201d are not the first words a farmer receiving a diagnosis might utter. But it\u2019s important to know what is ailing their plants so they can remedy it. Recently, Beissinger, who runs the Plant Diagnostic Lab in the Ratcliffe Hicks building at Storrs, combed through some 500 leek samples looking for pupa she then raised in petri dishes. In so doing, she helped confirm that the commercial farmer who sent the leeks had one of the first known cases of allium leafminer in Connecticut. \u201cAllium leafminer can completely decimate a leek field,\u201d says Beissinger. So knowing it\u2019s here is critical for controlling it this season and preparing for next.<\/p>\n