Meg McGrath was the featured guest on New York Times garden columnist Margaret Roach’s popular A Way to Gaden podcast August 30, chatting with Margaret aboout basil and cucurbit downy mildews. (Follow the links to listen to the podcast or read the interview transcript.)
“Here’s how my head, which is always lost in the garden, I guess, works,” writes Roach in her podcast introduction: “The first thing I thought about when the pandemic started—when we got news of a new pathogen in the world—was how many plant pathogens I’ve written about in my career, and the trajectories of each of them.
“Dr. Margaret McGrath is a longtime vegetable pathologist for Cornell University, whom I’ve turned to over and again to better understand many such plant diseases. Meg, in turn, turns to backyard gardeners, like us, to help her learn more about basil downy mildew.
“Besides her role as a scientist at Cornell’s Long Island Horticultural Research and Extension Center in Riverhead, New York, Meg McGrath is a keen gardener. Her applied research aims to improve the management of important vegetable diseases, and develop effective components for integrated pest management programs (IPM).”