Dr. Sarah Lowder
Dr. Sarah Lowder started as the Extension Viticulture Specialist and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Horticulture for the University of Georgia in March 2023.
Sarah is excited to be back in the southeast US; she was born and raised in North Carolina, but moved to Athens, Georgia, from Corvallis, Oregon, where she completed her PhD in Plant Pathology from Oregon State University.
Since starting her position, Sarah has been working on getting to know grape producers in Georgia, where she gets to work with muscadines and bunch grapes. Her goals in this role are to partner with local stakeholders and subject matter experts to provide accessible, research-based education and resources that help provide practical solutions to viticultural problems in the southeast US.
Her applied research focus seeks to help improve grape production practices in the southeast. That leads down many different roads, where she currently has projects looking at muscadine vine spacing, Pierce’s Disease management with an injected bacteriophage, sulfur phytotoxicity risk on hybrids (Fig. 2), boron usage in hybrids and muscadines, improvements on sprayer technology usage, trellising alternatives, and potential drone vineyard monitoring opportunities. Sarah considers one of her favorite parts of the job (other than easy access to lots of muscadines), is that she can collaborate with many of her colleagues inside and outside of UGA.
Sarah also hopes to convince all the students toward futures in viticulture. She teaches the undergraduate and graduate level Viticulture Production and Management Course in Athens, co-coordinates the Viticulture and Enology in the Mediterranean Region Course in Cortona, Italy, and oversees the UGA Winegrower Internship program.
Reach out to Sarah if you have any questions about viticulture at UGA! Or if you want to talk about her past research on monitoring and managing grape powdery mildew (especially fungicide resistant grape powdery mildew; Fig. 3).
