Dr. Kimberly Webb     CONTACT INFORMATION     ADDRESS: USDA, ARS, NPA  1701 Centre Ave. Crops Research Laboratory Fort Collins  CO  80526     PHONE: 970-492-7141 FAX: 970-492-7160     E-MAIL: Kimberly.Webb@ars.usda.gov DEGREES: 2005    Ph D.      Kansas State University               Plant Pathology                     1997    B.S.        Colorado State University             Soil and Crop Sciences   Research Focus: Sugarbeet is the source of more than half of the domestic sugar that is produced in the United States providing the U.S. with a viable domestic sweetener industry that produces an annual estimated $262.2 billion.  Importantly, sugarbeet is the most valuable crop in crop rotations in many growing areas of the United States and plant diseases remain an important source of crop and sugar losses throughout these growing regions. Thus, it is essential to continue to understand and develop improved disease resistance in sugarbeet in order to minimize losses in economic potential.       The plant pathology program is responsible for characterizing the interaction of major sugar beet pathogens (i.e. Cercospora beticola, Rhizoctonia solani, and Fusarium oxysporum) with sugar beet in order to provide new information that will facilitate the development of improved sugar beet germplasm with greater disease resistance and assist in the development of innovative management principles.  Using applied, biochemical, and molecular technologies we try to describe how sugarbeet pathogens cause disease, in the hope that novel pathways may be developed to better control those pathogens.  A second focus of the project is to determine the genetic relationship and spatial scale of the pathogen populations that affect sugarbeet, in order to more fully understand the disease interactions and how they may differ throughout the many production regions. Publications (Refereed): Ponciano, G., Webb, K., Bai, J., Vera Cruz, C., and Leach, J. E. 2004. Molecular characterization of the avrXa7 locus from Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae field isolates. Physiological and Molecular Plant Pathology 64:145-153. Leach, J.E., B. Liu, G. Ponciano, K. Webb, J. Wu, C. Vera Cruz, and H. Leung. 2004. Approaches to achieve durable resistance. Pages 263-269 in Proceedings of the XI. International Congress on Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions, St. Petersburg, Russia. IS-MPMI Press, Minneapolis, MN. Leach, J.E., K. Webb, G. Ponciano, I. Oña, M. Madamba, J. Bai, H. Leung, and C. Vera Cruz. 2002. Pathogen fitness penalty as a predictor of durability of disease resistance genes. Pages 222-231 in Biology of Plant-Microbe Interactions, S. Miller, A. Bent, eds. ISMPMI Press, Minneapolis, MN. Brooks, H. L., Jardine, D. J., Regehr, D. L., Fjell, D. L., Whitney, D. A., Webb, K., and Vanderlip, R. February 2000. Diagnosing Sorghum Production Problems in Kansas. S-125 Cooperative Extension Service, KSU, Manhattan, KS.