Plant Pathology and Microbiology

At the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology, faculty members, staff and students engage in multi-faceted research programs that explore the fascinating world of microorganisms and their interactions with the environment including soil and water, plants and insects and other microbes. Our research ranges from ecological theory to field applications. We aim at understanding microbial activity at the level of individual cells and entire communities, and applying our knowledge to answer the challenge of improving both agriculture and the environment. Teaching is also a core part of our mission, and we offer a range of introductory class and advanced graduate courses which expose our students to state of the art phytopathology and microbiology.

About the Department

The Department of Plantpathology and Microbiology aims at discovering, understanding, and applying novel principles and approaches to improve agriculture along with improving the environment. This challenge is addressed through theory, experiments and field studies, linking the computer to the bench to the field, applied to our common passion for microorganisms. This passion permeates our teaching, from basic courses to advanced classes.
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The department's researchers study bacteria and fungi, how they grow and multiply, their interactions with plants as pathogenic or as beneficial agents; how they organize in communities and the molecular tools they use to perform important ecological functions such as degrading organic waste, recycle wastewater or affect the life of pest insects.

Research is performed with state of art methodologies and technologies in mathematical modeling, molecular biology, bioinformatics and systems biology, and microscopy, conjugated with classical and high throughput microbiological approaches. The department hosts Israeli as well as many international graduate students and post-doctoral fellows.
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Research

Microorganisms are main players in the balance of health and disease. Microbial activities strongly influence agricultural production, the health of the natural environment, and the interplay between them.

Our research topics include how pathogenic microorganisms attack plants; how plants defend themselves, how microorganisms help them help themselves against pathogens and how they survive on plant surfaces.
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Department members who conduct research on these themes are:
Prof. Saul Burdman, Dr. Shay Covo, Prof. Yitzhak Hadar, Dr. Yael Helman, Dr. Nadav Kashtan, Dr. Maggie Levy, and Prof. Oded Yarden.

We also study how microbial communities assemble and work to provide beneficial or detrimental outputs, how specific microbial players function to affect processes affecting plant health or wastewater purification and organic waste degradation.
These topics are studied by
Prof. Saul Burdman, Dr. Yael Helman, Prof. Jonathan Friedman, Prof. Yitzhak Hadar, Dr Asaf Levy, and Prof. Edouard Jurkevitch.

Our research also addresses how these processes are affected by microbe-microbe interactions like cell-cell communication to create coordinated responses, how bacteria and fungi fight each other with molecular weapons or prey on each other.
Our faculty members researching those topics are:
Dr. Yael Helman, Prof. Edouard Jurkevitch, Dr. Asaf Levy, and Dr. Maggie Levy.

Finally, to understand how these phenomena emerge, we apply high throughput sequencing and –omics approaches, bioinformatics, high-end microscopy and mathematical modeling, and explore how fungi and bacteria grow, their genetics, physiology and the molecular mechanisms controlling them.
All department members actively pursue such goals:
Prof. Saul Burdman, Dr. Shay Covo, Prof. Jonathan Friedman, Prof. Yitzhak Hadar, Dr. Yael Helman, Prof. Edouard Jurkevitch, Dr. Nadav Kashtan, Dr Asaf Levy, Dr. Maggie Levy, and Prof. Oded Yarden.

We participate in the hub for Next Generation Agriculture, as well as in the Agriculture, Environment and Natural Resources Research Center.

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Plant Pathology and Microbiology

The Robert H Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment

About the Department

Research

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