About Adam Sparks
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Plant Pathology at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. I work Dr. Garrett's Plant Disease Ecology Lab. My interests and expertise include epidemiology and the ecology of plant diseases; GIS applications in plant pathology; agricultural extension outreach and teaching. My Ph.D. studies have focused on major plant pathogen groups, ecology and epidemiology, modeling, GIS, and remote sensing.
R web-based teaching modules
The web page that accompanies the poster that I presented at the 2007 APS meetings in San Diego is now here.
Solanum tuberosum
Interests
”Setting research priorities to benefit resource poor farmers: estimating current and future impacts of late blight resistant potato cultivars”, is a project with the International Potato Center. My work is a project to map areas in developing countries where the use of resistant potato varieties, has had a positive social and economic impact by reducing disease.
Additionally the work that I am doing will set the groundwork for use of global climate change weather datasets to predict how changes in weather patterns will affect the occurrence and severity of plant disease. The results of this analysis will allow us to better focus future efforts to further reduce losses to late blight and other diseases.
I have a keen interest in extension outreach and I have been fortunate to work in an extension position at the Crop Diagnostic Training and Research Center (DTC) at Purdue. I also worked as a research technician or technologist for several extension specialists at Purdue, and University of Nebraska - Lincoln. This has allowed me to work with a range of field crops, corn, wheat, soybean, canola, and sorghum in a variety of settings. These experiences convinced me to pursue my Ph.D. degree starting in January 2004. Since then I've taken a research project that works with potato late blight in an international setting.
My C.V. has a complete list of education and experiences.
For more about my current research, please see my information about my dissertation.