Plant pathologist and microbial ecologist who has directed the Plant Pathology Research Unit at the INRA centre in Avignon, France (now INRAE). Cindy E. Morris completed her PhD at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985, with a dissertation on how Pseudomonas syringae adapts to the leaf surface, then spent four years as a postdoctoral researcher at Beijing Agricultural University before joining INRA Avignon in 1989.
Contribution
Morris’s research follows the ecology of plant-pathogenic bacteria, above all P. syringae, from crop leaves into the atmosphere. Her postdoctoral work in Beijing already covered the aerial spread of bacterial pathogens and the role of ice-nucleation-active bacteria in crop decay. With David Sands and Anne-Marie Delort she named the field “microbiological meteorology” in 2009: the study of atmospheric processes where biology and physics meet.
Her 2014 paper in Global Change Biology, written with Franz Conen, J. Alex Huffman, Vaughan Phillips, Ulrich Pöschl and David Sands, is the primary reference for bioprecipitation. It describes a feedback in which vegetated landscapes release ice-nucleating microorganisms that catalyze cloud ice formation near 0 degrees C, seeding precipitation that in turn supports plant and microbial growth.
The wiki treats the mechanism as real and evolutionarily ancient, and its contribution to global ice nucleation as small. Its regional significance varies by biome. For the winter-rainfall Cape the wiki carries bioprecipitation as a citizen-science research program, kept apart from the operational water claim that restoration co-produces streamflow and infiltration.
Selected works
- Morris, C.E., Sands, D.C. & Delort, A.-M. (2009). “Microbiological meteorology: investigating atmospheric processes at the cross-roads of biological and physical sciences.” iLEAPS Newsletter, 7, 44-46.
- Morris, C.E., Conen, F., Huffman, J.A., Phillips, V., Pöschl, U. & Sands, D.C. (2014). “Bioprecipitation: a feedback cycle linking Earth history, ecosystem dynamics and land use through biological ice nucleators in the atmosphere.” Global Change Biology, 20(2), 341-351.
Related pages
Sources
- Morris, C.E. et al. (2014). Bioprecipitation
- Morris, Sands & Delort (2009), iLEAPS Newsletter, with author note (ResearchGate)
- Speaker listing, INRAE-PACA Plant Pathology Research Unit, UC Davis Phyllosphere meeting
Provenance
Written 23 October 2026 from the people named on Bioprecipitation, using public institutional profiles and published work. Public roles and publications only.