Andrew Walker

Professor Andrew Walker received his B.S. in Botany in 1975, M.S. in Horticulture/Viticulture in 1983, and a Ph.D. in Genetics in 1989 from UC Davis. He was appointed to the faculty in 1989 as a Professor of Viticulture and Genetics. He was the Louis P. Martini Endowed Chair in Viticulture from 2000 to 2015, and currently holds the Louise Rossi Endowed Chair in Viticulture .

Andy’s lab focuses on breeding rootstock and fruiting varieties with resistance to pests and diseases including nematodes, fanleaf degeneration, phylloxera, Pierce’s disease, powdery mildew, and tolerance to salinity and drought. Lab activities include classical breeding and inheritance studies, the development of rapid resistance assays, field trials of promising rootstock and scion selections, DNA marker analysis and genetic mapping, and efforts to identify and characterize resistance genes. He teaches the Viticultural Practices series and a graduate course entitled Horticulture and Agronomy: Practices. Between 1997 and 2014 he served as Chair of the Horticulture and Agronomy Graduate Group, which oversees the MS and PhD degrees in the Plant Sciences including Viticulture. He was Vice Chair of the Department of Viticulture and Enology from 2005 to 2008.

For more information, visit http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu/people/faculty.php?id=13.