Climate Change is Rewriting the Rules of Disease Resistance. Neha Paserkar Wants Plant Breeders Ready

The McGill University PhD student is working to understand how crops will defend themselves against white mold as atmospheric CO2 levels rise The post Climate Change is Rewriting the Rules of Disease Resistance. Neha Paserkar Wants Plant Breeders Ready appeared first on Seed World .

The McGill University PhD student is combining genomics, transcriptomics and bioinformatics to understand how crops will defend themselves against white mold as atmospheric CO2 levels rise. At one point, Neha Paserkar thought her scientific career might be over. She had left India to pursue a PhD in China, spending years studying Sclerotinia sclerotiorum , a stubborn fungal pathogen known to farmers as white mold.

Then COVID hit. Borders closed. Research stopped.

Funding disappeared before she could return to finish her dissertation. For some researchers, that might have been the end of the story. For Paserkar, it became the beginning of a different one.

Today, the McGill University PhD student is being recognized with a CPBI Scholarship for research that sits at the intersection of climate change, genomics, and food security — a field that may define the future of agriculture itself. Inside greenhouses and labs at McGill University, Paserkar is tackling a problem that keeps plant breeders awake at night: how crops will defend themselves in a world transformed by climate change. Farmers hate sclerotinia because it is persistent, opportunistic, and incredibly difficult to eliminate.

What makes her research especially timely is not just the disease itself. It is the environment surrounding it. At McGill, she is studying how bean plants respond to white mold under elevated CO 2 conditions — effectively simulating the atmosphere of the future.

Using genome-wide association studies, transcriptomics, and advanced bioinformatics, she is identifying genomic regions and candidate genes associated with disease resistance and trying to understand what happens at the molecular level when climate stress reshapes plant immunity. “We assume that the way plants and pathogens respond today won’t be the same in the future,” she says. “We need to understand now how to make crops more climate resilient.”

Along the way, she accumulated expertise in RNA sequencing, genome analysis, and molecular biology — skills increasingly essential in a world where breeding decisions are becoming as computational as they are biological. That hybrid skillset is one reason faculty at McGill believe she stands out. “Of the 86 graduate students I have trained during the last 40 years at McGill, I would rate Neha in the top 10%,” says Donald Smith, professor and director of the Eastern Canadian Oilseed Initiative.

Her supervisor, Jacqueline Bede, calls the elevated CO 2 component of Paserkar’s work extremely novel, noting that future atmospheric CO 2 levels could approach ~800 ppm under high-emission scenarios by the end of the century. Paserkar believes tomorrow’s scientists must evolve along with the changing climate. “Future scientists need both the practical understanding and the data-driven skills,” she says.

What motivates her, she adds, is simple. “I want to contribute toward sustainable agriculture and improved crop production. If we can improve disease resistance, we can directly improve food production.”

The Canadian Plant Breeding Innovation Scholarship is made possible by Alberta Grains, the Canadian Seed Growers’ Association, FP Genetics, HyTech Production, Richardson, SaskWheat Development Commission, SeCan, Seeds Canada, Seed World Canada, and Warburtons. The post Climate Change is Rewriting the Rules of Disease Resistance. Neha Paserkar Wants Plant Breeders Ready appeared first on Seed World .