Kelley Richardson is a Research Geneticist in lettuce breeding and genetics with the USDA Agricultural Research Service at the Sam Farr U.S. Crop Improvement and Protection Research Center in Salinas, CA. She works closely with stakeholders of the leafy vegetable industry to direct research objectives. Dr. Richardson has been working with Fusarium in lettuce since 2021 and identified the first non-race 1 isolate in California. She has expertise in characterizing isolates in pathogenicity assays on differential varieties and high-throughput phenotyping for germplasm resistance evaluation.