Isgouhi Kaloshian

Dr. Kaloshian received her B.Sc. degree in Agriculture (1982) and M.Sc. in Plant Protection (1984) from the American University of Beirut, Lebanon. Her Ph.D. research in Plant Pathology at the University of California, Riverside, was entitled, “Genetics of resistance to Meloidogyne spp. in wheat,” which she completed in 1989. Following receipt of her doctoral degree, she pursued research as a Postdoctoral Fellow at UC-Riverside and UC-Davis. In 1996, she was appointed Assistant Professor and Assistant Nematologist in the Department of Nematology at UC-Riverside, where she currently holds the position of Associate Professor.Dr. Kaloshian has worked on host resistance to plant parasitic nematodes for much of her career. Her current focus is on nematode resistance in tomato. The tomato gene Mi is the first cloned plant resistance gene with dual specificity to two unrelated organisms, a nematode and an aphid. Her research group is currently pursuing two approaches to identify plant genes that control disease resistance. The first approach is to genetically dissect the Mi-mediated resistance pathway to both nematodes and aphids. She is using mutational analysis to identify and characterize plant genes that control nematode and aphid recognition and the subsequent expression of resistance. The second approach is to isolate nematode resistance genes with novel specificities. Currently only one nematode resistance gene, Mi, is present in cultivated tomato. The value of Mi has been compromised by the appearance at several locations in California and in other parts of the world, variants of nematode strains and species that can infect Mi-bearing tomato. Mi is not effective at temperatures above 28 C. She has initiated a DNA marker analysis as a step towards genetic mapping and cloning of new sources of resistance genes in the wild tomato species, Solanum peruvianum.