Day 2 of #BlackBotanistsWeek is #PlantInteractions! Plants can get diseases from pathogens, just like us. When you have get plants/crops that get sick and die, there's less food to go around, leading to higher prices in stores! An example of this is a disease on citrus. 1/5

That photo above are citrus fruit infected with a disease called Citrus Greening. This disease makes citrus fruits turn green, become misshapen and bitter, and unable to sell in markets. There's no cure to this yet and it's wiping out citrus trees in Florida! 2/5

So if you're wondering why the price of orange juice (for those that still drink it lol) in stores have been increasing over the last several years, this is why. A single pathogen is hurting the citrus industry. It has gotten a bit better recently, but it's still destructive. 3/5

And that's just one of MANY examples. But cases like these is why I study plant pathogens. Right now, I'm studying this fungal pathogen called Colletotrichum and its interaction on this small plant called Arabidopsis, which is considered to be a model species for plants. 4/5

While we don't eat Arabidopsis (least I don't ), Colletotrichum infects crops that we do eat such as bananas, corn, and strawberries. So, if we can understand how Colletotrichum infects Arabidopsis, we can then figure out ways to make other crops resistant to it. 5/5