The Heart of the N.C. PSI: Sarah Cochran-Murray

Editor’s Note: As we gear up for NC State’s 2025 Day of Giving on March 26, the N.C. PSI is highlighting passion-inspired, donor-fueled staff, students and others behind our plant sciences research, extension and workforce development efforts.

Sarah Cochran-Murray can’t get enough of a good whodunnit. As a doctoral student at North Carolina State University, she’s applying her penchant for mystery solving to problems that plague farmers and their crops. And she’s using it to inspire the next generation of plant disease detectives.

With generous support from donors to the N.C. Plant Sciences initiative, Cochran-Murray is pursuing a Ph.D. under William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor and Extension Specialist Lina Quesada-Ocampo of the Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology.

As an emerging researcher, the Rockingham County native is finding ways to help growers detect a pathogen known as Phytophthora capsici and take action before it has a chance to destroy their vegetable crops.

While at NC State, she’s also had the chance to collaborate with Extension educators, engineers, governmental agencies and industry partners and to try her hand at educating students at all levels.

Cochran-Murray recently sat down to discuss her research and how the N.C. PSI is helping prepare for her for a future as an educator and plant pathologist.

How would you describe your research and its potential impact?

Phytophthora capsici is a soilborne pathogen of vegetables that can survive in surface irrigation water, and I’m looking into molecular diagnostics and fungicide resistance markers in the pathogen population in North Carolina. I do a lot of work with peppers, cucumbers and pumpkins – and  It’s also a problem in watermelon.

The pathogen starts off making a dark lesion on the fruit surface or at the base of the plant and you’ll start to see this powdered doughnut look. That’s the pathogen growing on the fruit and spoiling it. It ends up just melting the fruit, killing it and the plant so the farmer has nothing left.

It’s one of the most widespread cucurbit diseases, and it also affects other crops, including ornamentals and crops grown in greenhouses because it moves in water systems.

Our idea is if we can rapidly diagnose in the field using a molecular test in a handheld device, we can help farmers determine if and when it’s economical for them to pay for improved water sanitation systems.

I understand an estimated 20% to 40% of the world’s crops are lost to plant pests and pathogens.

Yes, and extreme weather events, like hurricanes, are making conditions more favorable for these pathogens at the same time we have less land available for agriculture and have to feed a growing population. And it’s not just what’s happening in the field while the plants grow, diseases also happen after the crop is collected from the field and put into storage. That also significantly decreases what goes to the table. All of this makes solutions based on plant pathology more important.

How and why have you gotten involved with the N.C. PSI’s Education and Workforce Platform?

I received the Norma L. Trolinder N.C. Plant Sciences Initiative Graduate Student Endowment Award, and under the fellowship you have to pick the path you want to go down and you need to have a mentor. My mom was a teaching assistant and library assistant, and so I have always felt drawn to teaching and education.

When I walk by the Demo Lab downstairs, Sarah Dinger (N.C. PSI program manager for the education and extension outreach) has always been so happy to talk and she mentioned the opportunity to teach and mentor high school students, so I applied and was accepted.

You led a Plant Sciences Outreach Day session for high school students at the Plant Sciences Building in January. What was that like?

I’ve always been super into true crime, and so as we approached Plant Sciences Outreach Day, I was trying to think of a way to keep the students interested and also teach them something about plant pathology. As plant pathologists, based off limited amounts of evidence, we have to piece together what pathogen caused the disease that’s affecting a farmer’s crop.

So I designed what we called a “crop scene investigation,” in which the students had to look at different pieces of evidence that we would get – for example, crop rotation histories, spray logs, weather information – and based off the favorable conditions and what we know about the pathogens, they had to figure out which of the pathogens caused the disease at the farm.

It was the first educational lab that I’d ever created by myself, but we had a 75% solve rate, which is really good in the short amount of time we had, and I think the students really had fun.

It was cool to see these students staring at the paper and see that light bulb moment where they say, “Oh, wait. I think I found something important. Let me tell my friends so that we can solve this.”

You’re also an N.C. PSI mentor for students participating in the N.C. Youth Institute in April. What’s involved in that?

I have four high school students that I mentor. We meet monthly on Zoom, and they have access to me via email if they have questions. They have to come up with a topic related to a challenge in a specific country or state, and then we had to help them develop a research project and write a paper about it. I’m not just working with students who are interested in plant pathology, so I’ve had to read papers about things they’re interested in so that I can inform them better. I really enjoy seeing how they think and what do they think is important and what help do they need,

How do you think that these educational efforts will ultimately impact people in agriculture in North Carolina?

Plant pathology is not a very widely known discipline. When I tell people that I’m in plant pathology, they say, “What’s that?” I want these younger generations to see that they have options, and there may be some disciplines that they’ve never heard about that could really interest them. I’m hoping that as we tell the younger generations about plant pathology, maybe we can start building up our undergraduate programs and get more interest in the discipline. With more people trained in plant pathology, we can help farmers solve problems faster and more effectively.

What do you hope to do after you graduate from NC State?

Ideally, I’d like to be a professor with a teaching appointment, but I’m also open to other opportunities. I really do enjoy high school age students – but, honestly, all ages are fun to me.

How does what is being done at the N.C. PSI motivate you?

I was just talking to Dr. Quesada about this; I feel like PSI is an environment that uplifts students and professors and gives them opportunities to see what it is that they like. And if you want to do education or you want to do robotics – whatever it is you want to do – the PSI has so many opportunities for you to present your research and meet people in a supportive environment. The PSI has also given me a lot of opportunities to boost my resume and get hands-on experience as well as monetary support that’s so important to graduate students. I’ve really appreciated all it’s done for me.