ERIE, Pa. — Mike Campbell manages a 40-acre lab, a research vineyard where biologists and viticulturists grow, test and sometimes intentionally stress Concord and Niagara grapes. The facility supports more than 580 farms in Pennsylvania and New York.
The Lake Erie Regional Grape Research and Extension Center is a collaboration of Penn State and Cornell University. As the center’s director, Campbell, a distinguished professor of biology at Penn State Behrend, often oversees student research in the vineyard.
This summer’s student-supported projects included a study of the fungal biome in the vineyard’s soil. Elise Kelly, a sophomore from Wattsburg, took soil samples from different areas of the vineyard, including soil beneath and between vines. She then isolated and sequenced DNA to identify the fungi that are present in the soil.
That experience can be invaluable for an undergraduate student, Campbell said.
“In a classroom, many things are canned and very set up,” he said. “But in research, things change. Things happen that are unexpected. That gives students a chance to apply the learning they got in the classroom to the scientific community. They see how their findings fit into other science that has been done.”
To learn more about student work at the Lake Erie Regional Grape Research and Extension Center, watch the video below: