MGI graduate students awarded Plant Resilience Institute Seed Grants
Three graduate students from the department of Microbiology, Genetics, & Immunology, or MGI, have been awarded Seed Grants from the MSU Plant Resilience Institute, supporting new collaborative research projects focused on improving crop resilience under drought conditions.
The Plant Resilience Institute Seed Grant program provides up to $10,000 in funding over 18 months to support innovative trainee-led research. The program emphasizes projects that are both high risk and high reward, with a particular focus on collaborations that span laboratories across Michigan State University.
Maddy Quinlan and Imani Pascoe
Maddy Quinlan, of the Crosson Lab, and Imani Pascoe, of the Lebeis Lab, will be collaborating on a new project entitled “Helper bacteria as tools to enhance soybean nodulation and support drought resilience.” Together, they will investigate how microbial communities in soil can be leveraged to strengthen plant performance under environmental stress.
Soybeans are among the world’s most important agricultural crops, but drought and heat can significantly reduce yields. These plants rely on beneficial soil bacteria known as rhizobia to convert nitrogen into a usable form, reducing the need for synthetic fertilizers. However, drought conditions can weaken this relationship, limiting plant growth.
Quinlan and Pascoe’s project explores whether additional “helper” bacteria in the soil can support rhizobia and improve soybean resilience during drought. Their work will involve identifying candidate helper strains in the lab and testing whether they enhance plant growth under water-limited conditions.
By developing new ways to support plant–microbe partnerships, this research aims to lay the groundwork for microbe-based strategies that help crops better withstand drought in a changing climate.
“Maddy has done an outstanding job developing this collaborative project with MGI professors Aretha Fiebig and Sarah Lebeis and MGI student Imani Pascoe, focusing on soil bacteria that support plant health,” said MGI Rudolph Hugh Endowed Professor Sean Crosson. “I'm thrilled that she was awarded seed funding from PRI to identify bacterial strains that promote soybean resilience during drought, and I look forward to seeing what she discovers.”
“This grant will allow me to collaborate with Imani on a high-risk, high-reward project that we are very excited about,” said Quinlan. “It will also give me the opportunity to apply the skills I've developed through MGI to plant growth and plant-microbe studies, expanding my research experience.”
Associate Professor Sarah Lebeis of MGI and the department of Plant, Soil, and Microbial Sciences also expressed her support for the project saying, “Imani has been examining how interaction between microbes impact the effects of beneficial microbes. This project is an exciting opportunity to expand to understand how helper bacteria interact with nodule-forming bacteria in soybeans.”
Pascoe is also looking forward to the collaboration, saying, "I'm grateful that this grant will allow me to work with Maddy and utilize new techniques to investigate plant-microbe interactions."
Asia Hawkins
Asia Hawkins, an MGI graduate student working in the Haus Lab in the Department of Horticulture, is leading a separate seed grant–funded project focused on improving how researchers study plant disease as it develops over time. Working with co‑principal investigators Grace Sidberry of the Haus Lab and Irene Blanco‑Casallas of the Rojas Lab, her project explores new ways to better understand plant–microbe interactions.
Her research combines imaging tools with genetic analysis to track disease progression in plants in real time. Using fluorescently tagged Fusarium fungi, Hawkins will infect common bean plants (Phaseolus vulgaris) and monitor how infection spreads before analyzing changes in gene activity within individual plant cells.
By connecting these real-time observations with detailed molecular data, Hawkins’ approach aims to overcome limitations of traditional methods, which typically capture only a snapshot of infection. Her work is designed to provide a more complete picture of how different cells—and different pathogen strains—contribute to disease progression.
This project represents a novel and collaborative approach with the potential to be adapted to other biological systems, helping researchers better understand complex interactions between hosts and microbes.
“Receiving the PRI Seed Grant is an amazing achievement. Single-cell sequencing is expensive, and without this funding I would not have been able to incorporate it into my research,” said Hawkins. “On top of that, it has given me and my collaborators the chance to take on an exciting project that could have significant impact beyond just our areas of research.”
