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Research in the McHale lab focuses on the characterization and manipulation of natural variation in crop plants, primarily soybean and chile peppers. Our goals are to identify the genes conferring disease resistance, yield, and quality traits and, in soybean, examine how best to integrate these alleles for the development of improved varieties. To accomplish these goals, we use new technologies and a cross-disciplinary approach, which includes genetics and genomics, evolutionary studies, bioinformatics, and plant pathology. 

News

  1. Congratulations Hannah for Receiving IGP Funding!

    Mar 21, 2023

    Hannah was recently awarded funding from the CFAES Internal Grants Program (IGP). This funding will help further Hannah's PhD work on her project, Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) landrace diversity in resistance to Phytophthora capsici root rot.

  2. Job posting for Wooster soybean field researcher

    Jan 17, 2023

    The McHale lab is hiring for a full time soybean field researcher position based on the OSU Wooster campus. Please visit https://osu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/OSUCareers/job/Wooster-Campus/Researcher-1_R70437-1 for a full job posting. 

  3. HCS Graduate Student Publication Award

    Jan 12, 2023

    Congratulations to Christian Vargas-Garcia for being the recipient of this year’s HCS Graduate Student Publication Award in the PhD category. His paper is titled, "Identification of Candidate Genes for a Major Quantitative Disease Resistance Locus from Soybean PI 427105B for Resistance to Phytophthora sojae” and published in Frontiers in Plant Science. Well done, Christian!