Welcome to the Arif Lab
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About Us

The population of the world will increase by 2.4 billion people in next three decades. New approaches are needed to sustainably increase global crop productivity to feed the growing world’s population. Sustainable disease management is critical to continue stable production of a safe food supply with high yield. Our group is using ‘omics’ technologies to understand the disease epidemiology. We are working on plant microbiome, population genetics, interactions and comparative genomics. Also, we develop novel isothermal and lab based protocols for applications in routine diagnostics, biosecurity and microbial forensics.  ​

1st Graduate from Phytobacteriology lab

Adriana's presentation 

Adrian Larrea-Sarmiento started in Spring 2017 and graduated (MS) in December 2018. She worked on comparative genomics, molecular interactions and diagnostics. She was outstanding and generated data for 6 peer-reviewed publications (3 as senior author and other 3 as 2nd author). She won two awards.

Meet The New Faces Of Our Team  

Spring 2018: Dr. Shefali Dobhal from India started as Junior Researcher. 

Fall 2018: Sujan Paudel from Nepal started as graduate student

Fall 2018: Samudra Gunarathne from Sri Lanka started as graduate student

New Graduate Student

Fall 2017: Gamze Boluk from Turkey started as graduate student

Adriana WON PEPS Best MS Poster Award in CTAHR Student Research Symposium 2017

April 2017: Adriana Larrea won PEPS Best MS Poster Award in CTAHR Student Research Symposium 2017. The title of her Research Poster was "Core- and Pan-Genome Analyses of Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris: Black Rot Pathogen of Crucifers"

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New Graduate Student

Spring 2018: Dario Arizala from Ecuador started his master in our lab

Senior Editor of Plant Health Progress

Dr. Arif has accepted the invitation to serve American Phytopathological Society's Journal "Plant Health Progress" as a Senior Editor. His term begins in January 2018 and will last in December 2020. Plant Health Progress is a multidisciplinary journal covering all aspects of applied plant health management in agriculture and horticulture. 

Plant Biosecurity in Theory and Practices 

May 2017: ​Arif and Adriana participated in a one week long course of Plant Biosecurity in Theory and Practice at Biosecurity Research Institute, Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas. Arif was an invited speaker and delivered a talk on "The Select Agent Rathayibacter toxicus: High Consequence Bacteria of Biosecurity Concern". He was also an instructor for hands on training inside the containment facility. 

First student in our program!

Spring 2017: Adriana Larrea from Ecuador started in January 2017 as a first student in our program. She will be working on Xanthomonas axonopodis and Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. michiganensis.

New lab of phytobacteriology open at the University of Hawaii at Manoa

​Dr. Arif started working as Assistant Professor at the Department of Plant and Environmental Protection Sciences in October, 2016. He started his lab (St John 312) in February, 2017.