Lab News

What's going on in the Geddes lab? Updates on work and fun..

New Research Article

Aug 11, 2025: Riley's paper on engineering undomesticated microbes is out in Microbial Biotechnology!

New Research Article

Aug 10, 2025: Garrett's work defining a role for stachydrine catabolism in root nodule symbiosis was published in MPMI first look today!

Read it here!

New Focus Article

Aug 5, 2025: Chandan contributed a great focus article on a link between nodulation and iron uptake

Check it out here! https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00299-025-03584-w

Collaborator Visit!

August 8, 2025: Dr. Tami McDonald (collaborator on NSF PGRP) and her student Caroline Davis visited our lab from St. Catherine's University for three days this week. Chinh did an excellent job teaching them about plant growth and fluorescent imaging for competition experiments. We really enjoyed hosting them, thanks for the visit!

New Research Article

July 29, 2025: Garrett and barney contributed to new research about mobile gene cluster contribution to partner quality in rhizobia, published this week in PNAS. Work funded by NSF PGRP.

Press release for the article can be found here: https://phys.org/news/2025-07-hidden-gene-clusters-soil-bacteria.html

Plant Biology 2025

July 25-30, 2025: The Geddes lab was well represented at Plant Biology 2025 (Thanks to squeezing 12 people in a state-fleet van and an airbnb). Barney and Chandan hosted a session: Plant Quest for Quality Microbial Partners, and the group collectively presented 10 research posters.

2025 NDSU REC Field Days

July 23, 2025: Barney presented research updates on rhizobium inoculants at the North Central Research Extension Center Field day.

New Research Article

July 22, 2025: Brooke published her first first-author paper highlighting our new protocol for incorperating an acoustic liquid handling robot into NGS library preparation. Congrats Brooke!

Protocols available at:

dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.e6nvwb5r2vmk/v2

Soybean root trial sampling

July 17, 2025: It was a beautiful day for sampling our soybean root anatomy and microbiome trial in Gardner, ND. Similar trials were harvested in Missouri, Indiana and Alabama. Great leadership by Mahmud. Collaboration with Fritchi (Mizzou), Barros (Mizzou), Iyer-Pascuzzi (Purdue), Sans-Saez (Auburn) and Dottie (NDSU) labs.

New Research Article

July 9, 2025: A new paper on minimizing pSymB was published this week. One more step towards a minimal symbiotic genome!

Pulse inoculant trial sampling

June 23-26, 2025: Several students and post docs from the Geddes lab teamed up on a mulit-day trip accross ND to sample our pulse inoculant trials and Carrington, Williston, Hettinger and Minot RECs. We are checking to see response to local rhizobium inoculants we have identified. Organised and led by Mia and Iveta. Funded by USDA SCBGP.

New Research Article

June 17, 2025: Eglantina's work leading or microbiome culturomics efforts was published this week, along with extensive protocol resources for the research community.

Protocols available at: dx.doi.org/10.17504/protocols.io.eq2ly662egx9/v1

New Research Article

June 12, 2025: Jake's first paper advancing bioreporter/metabarcoding in rhizobia was published this week. Congrats Jake!

Plasmids will soon be available at Addgene (Deposit 85226)

Soybean Iron Deficiency Chlorosis Inoculant Trial

June 5, 2025: Taking results to the field! We planted soybeans inoculated with a synthetic community we have designed to reduce iron deficiency chlorosis, a major agronomic challenge in our region. Collaboration with Dottie and Webster labs (NDSU), let by Urmi and Chandan. Funded by ND Soybean Council.

BAYER University Mentoring Program (B4U)

May 28, 2025: Gayathri and Brooke were both selected to participate in the Bayer Unviersity Mentoring Program which provides 1-on-1 mentoring with leaders from Bayer. Today they visited Iowa to tour Bayer’s R&D breeding, DNA genotyping, and seed production facilities

StartupBREW Fargo

April 2, 2025: Barney spoke at StartupBREW, a weekly meetup for local entrepreneurs and community members about his efforts to take North Dakota State University research from the lab to the market.

New Research Article

March 17, 2025: We just published an expansion to our BEVA system. Check it out for a fresh new batch of Golden Gate cloning plasmids for the research community.

Plasmids available at: https://www.addgene.org/browse/article/28252408/

Lab Annual Meeting

February 26, 2025: After an afternoon of flash talks and research updates, we enjoyed eachouters company with a banquet dinner. Hopefully a new New Years tradition.

Oral Presentation at PAG

January 13, 2025: Brooke presented her research on plant microbiomes in relation to Fusarium headblight in barley, and optimizing new high-throughput approaches at a workshop at the Plant and Animal Genome Conference in San Diego. Way to go Brooke!

Halloween Fun

October 31, 2024: (most of) the Geddes lab dressed as pirates for the day for the departmental costume contest. Great team spirit!

Pumpkin Carving

October 29, 2024: Barney hosted lab members and other graduate students from the department at his home for an annual pumpkin carving get together.

Agronomists Happy Hour

December 11, 2023: Barney was a guest on the fantastic Aggie podcast Agronomists Happy Hour and spoke about his views on biologicals and beer.

Link: https://agronomistshappyhour.com/episodes/unlocking-the-soil-microbiome-with-barney-geddes

Dr. Geddes awarded Richard and Linda Offerdahl Faculty Fellowship

October 30, 2023: Thanks to generous support from philanthropists Richard and Linda Offerdahl, Barney was inducted as the Richard and Linda Offerdahl Faculty Fellow in a ceremony today.

Growing Pulse Crops Podcast

July 1, 2023: Barney was a guest on the Growing Pulse Crops podcast where he chatted about pulse nodulation and nitrogen fixation.

Link: https://growingpulsecrops.com/episode/nodulation-and-nitrogen-fixation-with-barney-geddes-ph-d

Soybean Nodulation Research Video

June 28, 2023: Dr. Geddes participated in a video discussing our research interests in rhizobium-soybean symbiosis made by the North Dakota Soybean Council.

End of Spring Term Bowling Outing

May 13, 2023: We made it out for our annual bowling outing to celebrate the end of Spring term

Page updated

Report abuse