About

Greg Vogel is an Assistant Professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science at Cornell University, officially joining the department on August 16, 2023. He obtained his PhD in Plant Breeding and Genetics from Cornell University in 2020 and has experience working as a leafy greens breeder in the controlled environment agriculture industry before returning to Cornell as a faculty member. His research program concentrates on the improvement of vegetable crops, with particular focus on enhanced disease resistance, quality, and novelty to benefit both growers and consumers. His interests include applied vegetable breeding, plant-microbe interactions, and disease resistance, especially in crops such as tomato and eggplant. Greg's recent research aims to discover and describe the genetic basis of novel traits that increase productivity, resilience, or consumer appeal, and to model the successful implementation of technologies like genomic selection in applied vegetable breeding programs. He is committed to releasing high-quality, disease-resistant cultivars, with initial focus areas including Verticillium wilt resistance in eggplant, early blight and Septoria leaf spot resistance in tomato, and the characterization of heirloom quality traits in modern tomato varieties. Greg holds a 60% research and 40% extension appointment, actively engaging with the community, including growers, seed industry professionals, students, and educators. His extension work involves conducting trials of commercially available varieties and disseminating results related to productivity, quality, and disease resistance. He also aims to train students in genetics, genomics, and cultivar development, emphasizing both scientific and practical aspects of plant breeding.

Research topics

• Genetics
• Biology
• Botany
• Horticulture
• Agronomy
• Biotechnology

Selected publications

• Toward an art of genomic selection in vegetable breeding

  Crop Science · 2026-01-01

  articleSenior author

  Abstract Genomic selection (GS) is a powerful strategy for accelerating genetic gain in plant breeding. While in recent years GS has been widely adopted in breeding programs for agronomic crops, its implementation in vegetable breeding has been comparatively limited. Vegetable breeders face many unique challenges that impede the direct translation of GS implementation strategies from agronomic breeding programs. These challenges include the large number of traits that are important for cultivar development, the difficulty in quantitatively phenotyping many of these traits, especially those related to quality and sensory attributes, and the diversity of reproductive strategies and biological features represented among different vegetable crops. Successful vegetable breeders have been able to efficiently develop new varieties with improved quality and productivity, while constantly adapting to shifting market demands and growing methods, by complementing their understanding of heredity with elements of creativity and intuition‐based decision‐making. Like earlier advances in genetics and statistics that were once viewed as only theoretical, we feel GS can become an additional part of breeders’ routine selection strategy and, ultimately, another element of the “art” of vegetable breeding.

  PublisherDOI

• <i>Phytophthora capsici</i>: Recent Progress on Fundamental Biology and Disease Management 100 Years After Its Description

  Annual Review of Phytopathology · 2023 · 83 citations

  • Biology
  • Biotechnology
  • Botany

  .

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Diversity of <i>Passalora fulva</i> Isolates Collected from Tomato Plants in U.S. High Tunnels

  Phytopathology · 2022-01-13 · 5 citations

  article

  High tunnels extend the growing season of high value crops, including tomatoes, but the environmental conditions within high tunnels favor the spread of the tomato leaf mold pathogen, Passalora fulva (syn. Cladosporium fulvum). Tomato leaf mold results in defoliation, and if severe, losses in yield. Despite substantial research, little is known regarding the genetic structure and diversity of populations of P. fulva associated with high tunnel tomato production in the United States. From 2016 to 2019, a total of 50 P. fulva isolates were collected from tomato leaf samples in high tunnels in the Northeast and Minnesota. Other Cladosporium species were also isolated from the leaf surfaces. Koch’s postulates were conducted to confirm that P. fulva was the cause of the disease symptoms observed. Race determination experiments revealed that the isolates belonged to either race 0 (six isolates) or race 2 (44 isolates). Polymorphisms were identified within four previously characterized effector genes: Avr2, Avr4, Avr4e, and Avr9. The largest number of polymorphisms were observed for Avr2. Both mating type genes, MAT1-1-1 and MAT1-2-1, were present in the isolate collection. For further insights into the pathogen diversity, the 50 isolates were genotyped at 7,514 single-nucleotide polymorphism loci using genotyping-by-sequencing. Differentiation by region but not by year was observed. Within the collection of 50 isolates, there were 18 distinct genotypes. Information regarding P. fulva population diversity will enable better management recommendations for growers, as high tunnel production of tomatoes expands.

  PublisherDOI

• Quantitative Genetic Analysis of Interactions in the Pepper– <i>Phytophthora capsici</i> Pathosystem

  Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions · 2022-08-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The development of pepper cultivars with durable resistance to the oomycete Phytophthora capsici has been challenging due to differential interactions between the species that allow certain pathogen isolates to cause disease on otherwise resistant host genotypes. Currently, little is known about the pathogen genes involved in these interactions. To investigate the genetic basis of P. capsici virulence on individual pepper genotypes, we inoculated sixteen pepper accessions, representing commercial varieties, sources of resistance, and host differentials, with 117 isolates of P. capsici, for a total of 1,864 host-pathogen combinations. Analysis of disease outcomes revealed a significant effect of inter-species genotype-by-genotype interactions, although these interactions were quantitative rather than qualitative in scale. Isolates were classified into five pathogen subpopulations, as determined by their genotypes at over 60,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). While absolute virulence levels on certain pepper accessions significantly differed between subpopulations, a multivariate phenotype reflecting relative virulence levels on certain pepper genotypes compared with others showed the strongest association with pathogen subpopulation. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) identified four pathogen loci significantly associated with virulence, two of which colocalized with putative RXLR effector genes and another with a polygalacturonase gene cluster. All four loci appeared to represent broad-spectrum virulence genes, as significant SNPs demonstrated consistent effects regardless of the host genotype tested. Host genotype–specific virulence variants in P. capsici may be difficult to map via GWAS with all but excessively large sample sizes, perhaps controlled by genes of small effect or by multiple allelic variants that have arisen independently. [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license .

  PublisherDOI

• Quantitative genetic analysis of interactions in the pepper- <i>Phytophthora capsici</i> pathosystem

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2021-12-07

  preprintOpen access1st author

  ABSTRACT The development of pepper cultivars with durable resistance to the oomycete Phytophthora capsici has been challenging due to differential interactions between the species that allow certain pathogen isolates to cause disease on otherwise resistant host genotypes. Currently, little is known about the pathogen genes that are involved in these interactions. To investigate the genetic basis of P. capsici virulence on individual pepper genotypes, we inoculated sixteen pepper accessions – representing commercial varieties, sources of resistance, and host differentials – with 117 isolates of P. capsici , for a total of 1,864 host-pathogen combinations. Analysis of disease outcomes revealed a significant effect of inter-species genotype-by-genotype interactions, although these interactions were quantitative rather than qualitative in scale. Isolates were classified into five pathogen subpopulations, as determined by their genotypes at over 60,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). While absolute virulence levels on certain pepper accessions significantly differed between subpopulations, a multivariate phenotype reflecting relative virulence levels on certain pepper genotypes compared to others showed the strongest association with pathogen subpopulation. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) identified four pathogen loci significantly associated with virulence, two of which colocalized with putative RXLR effector genes and another with a polygalacturonase gene cluster. All four loci appeared to represent broad-spectrum virulence genes, as significant SNPs demonstrated consistent effects regardless of the host genotype tested. Host genotype-specific virulence variants in P. capsici may be difficult to map via GWAS, perhaps controlled by many genes of small effect or by multiple alleles that have arisen independently at the same loci.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• New Sources of Resistance in Winter Squash (<i>Cucurbita moschata</i>) to Phytophthora Crown Rot and Their Relationship to Cultivated Squash

  Plant Health Progress · 2021-01-01 · 7 citations

  articleOpen access

  Butternut squash (Cucurbita moschata) is an important vegetable crop grown and consumed in most states in the United States. C. moschata lines and interspecific hybrids between Cucurbita species are also used as rootstocks for grafting watermelon and melon. However, currently most commercially available C. moschata squash varieties are highly susceptible to crown and root rot caused by the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora capsici, especially in the southeastern United States. All available plant introductions (PIs) of C. moschata (319 PIs) were evaluated for resistance to crown rot. Four-week-old plants were inoculated with 10 4 zoospores from a local South Carolina isolate of P. capsici. Plants were rated for disease severity 3 weeks after inoculation using a 0 to 5 rating scale (0 = no symptoms and 5 = plant dead). The majority (87%) of the C. moschata PIs were highly susceptible to crown rot in the first evaluation and were rated as 5. Reevaluation of the promising PIs identified several potential new sources of resistance (e.g., Grif 935, PI 442272, PI 442264, PI 512142, PI 438724, PI 438778, and PI 442280). Variability in resistance reaction among plants within a PI was also observed, and not all plants exhibited resistance. Further evaluation of S 1 generation from the most resistant plants (rated ≤1) demonstrated that highly resistant plants could be selected from these PIs to develop lines for use in breeding programs. These new sources of resistance can be utilized for developing new crown and root rot resistant rootstocks for watermelon grafting and for developing resistant varieties for human consumption.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• High-Quality Reference Genome Sequence for the Oomycete Vegetable Pathogen Phytophthora capsici Strain LT1534

  Microbiology Resource Announcements · 2021-05-27 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  The oomycete Phytophthora capsici is a destructive pathogen of a wide range of vegetable hosts, especially peppers and cucurbits. A 94.17-Mb genome assembly was constructed using PacBio and Illumina data and annotated with support from transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq) reads.

  PublisherDOI

• A combined BSA-Seq and linkage mapping approach identifies genomic regions associated with Phytophthora root and crown rot resistance in squash

  Theoretical and Applied Genetics · 2021 · 39 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Biology
  • Genetics
  • Botany
  PublisherDOI

• Genome-wide association study in New York <i>Phytophthora capsici</i> isolates reveals loci involved in mating type and mefenoxam sensitivity

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2020-04-03 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st author

  Abstract Phytophthora capsici is a soilborne oomycete plant pathogen that causes severe vegetable crop losses in New York (NY) State and worldwide. This pathogen is difficult to manage, in part due to its production of long-lasting sexual spores and its tendency to quickly evolve fungicide resistance. We single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyped 252 P. capsici isolates, predominantly from NY, in order to conduct a genome-wide association study for mating type and mefenoxam insensitivity. The population structure and extent of chromosomal copy number variation in this collection of isolates were also characterized. Population structure analyses showed isolates largely clustered by the field site where they were collected, with values of F ST between pairs of fields ranging from 0.10 to 0.31. Thirty-three isolates were putative aneuploids, demonstrating evidence for having up to four linkage groups present in more than two copies, and an additional two isolates appeared to be genome-wide triploids. Mating type was mapped to a region on scaffold 4, consistent with previous findings, and mefenoxam insensitivity was associated with several SNP markers at a novel locus on scaffold 62. We identified several candidate genes for mefenoxam sensitivity, including a homolog of yeast ribosome synthesis factor Rrp5, but failed to locate near the scaffold 62 locus any subunits of RNA Polymerase I, the enzyme that has been hypothesized to be the target site of phenylamide fungicides in oomycetes. This work expands our knowledge of the population biology of P. capsici and provides a foundation for functional validation of candidate genes associated with epidemiologically important phenotypes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Performance and Resistance to Phytophthora Crown and Root Rot in Squash Lines

  HortTechnology · 2020-09-02 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  Phytophthora crown and root rot, caused by the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora capsici , is a devastating disease of squash and pumpkin ( Cucurbita pepo ). No currently available cultivars provide complete resistance to this disease. Three newly developed squash lines and four hybrids were evaluated in greenhouse and field experiments for their resistance to phytophthora crown and root rot as well as for their horticultural performance. The three newly developed lines ranked among the most resistant entries included in 2 years of field trials. In addition, in a separate greenhouse experiment, one of the lines was shown to display the least severe disease symptoms among a group of accessions previously reported to possess partial resistance to phytophthora crown and root. Furthermore, the resistance was observed to be robust to several isolates of P. capsici . However, the phytophthora-resistant lines had reduced yield relative to standard squash cultivars. These lines are useful for continued breeding efforts toward a phytophthora crown and root rot-resistant cultivar.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Christine D. Smart

  Cornell University

  15 shared

• Michael A. Gore

  Cornell University

  7 shared

• Michael Mazourek

  Cornell University

  5 shared

• Kyle E. LaPlant

  Cornell University

  4 shared

• Ella R. Reeves

  North Carolina State University

  4 shared

• Edgar Huitema

  University of Dundee

  2 shared

• Kelly R. Robbins

  Cornell University

  2 shared

• Melissa Regnier

  Cornell University

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Plant Breeding and Genetics

  Cornell

  2020