Lori Carris at the Summer Palace outside Beijing

Dr. Lori Carris invited to China

Dr. Lori Carris was invited to China to collaborate on the identification of smut spores in shipments of grass seed and grains from the US, Canada and Australia. She arrived in China on Dec. 14 and returned home on Dec. 22, 2004

For more photos click here

NOTICE OF VACANCY

Faculty Position in Plant Bacteriology. Permanent full-time (12 months) tenure track appointment in the Department of Plant Pathology, College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences. Individual reports to the Chair of the Department of Plant Pathology. Salary is commensurate with qualifications and experience. Washington State University provides health insurance and contributes to the TIAA-CREF retirement plan. Click here for a complete description

Pictured above (left to right): Tim Murray, Harold Brown.

Benefactor Plaque Presented to Harold Brown

Tim Murray, Chair for the Department of Plant Pathology presented the benefactor plaque to Harold Brown.

The Benefactors of Washington State University are alumni and friends whose extraordinary commitment has led them to make one-time or cumulative gifts of $100,000 or more to WSU. The generosity of Benefactors provides the margin of excellence in research, scholarship, and the arts at Washington State. We are grateful for the profound generosity of the individuals and organizations.

The Harold Brown Foundation’s interest in improving the world’s understanding of resistance to disease in plants and the control of diseases in general is making it possible for Dr. Timothy Murray to research ways to create a stronger, healthier wheat plant.

“The support of the Harold Brown Foundation gives us a great deal of flexibility to pursue questions or research where another grant would not have been able to support,” says Dr. Murray. “The funds also support speculative research for which not enough data are available to support successful grant proposals from other sources.”

New Co-worker at WSU Wenatchee

Hongxia Li recently joined Chang-Lin Xiao’s laboratory as a postdoctoral researcher associate at the WSU Tree Fruit Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee. Li is working on management
of fungicide resistance of postharvest pathogens, primarily Penicillium expansum and Botrytis cinerea, on apples in the orchard/storage system.

Li received her Ph.D. degree in Plant Pathology from the Nanjing Agricultural University, China. Her Ph.D. research dealt with mechanisms and monitoring of resistance to carbendazim in four plant pathogenic fungi.

Pictured above: (left to right):
Dr. Jack Rogers, Dr. Gil Cook, Dr. Timothy Murray

Invited Guest Speaker for PLP 515

In honor of his retirement from DuPont Ag Products, Dr. Gil Cook presented a seminar entitled “Adventures in Afghan Agriculture – 1970” where he described his experiences working on common smut of wheat in Afghanistan during the summer of 1970. Afterwards he was presented with a shirt bearing the WSU and Departmental logo. Dr. Cook began working in Eastern Washington in 1979 and has supported the Department of Plant Pathology and many of its programs involved in fungicide development over the years. He is
also an avid Cougar fan and has been a long time football season ticket holder.

Plant Pathology Inventors Honored

Pictured above (left to right):
James Petersen, Vice Provost for Research, President V. Lane Rawlins, Hanu Pappu, Keri Druffel, Arden Bement, NSF Director,
and Bruce Jackson, WSURF Director.

Washington State University celebrated its world class inventors --— researchers whose cutting-edge discoveries have led to the creation of 887 protected patents — during a Friday, Sept. 17, address and reception.

Hanu Pappu and Keri Druffel were two of the 63 inventors that were honored at the reception. The program and reception honored the inventors was presided byWSU President V. Lane Rawlins and Provost Robert C. Bates.

Congratulations Hanu and Keri

Click here for a complete story

Visitor from UC Davis

The Department of Plant Pathology hosted a visitor from University of California-Davis, Suzanne Latham. Ms Latham is a student of Doug Gubler, University of California, Davis. She studies fungal diseases of wine grape vines. She recently visited Jack Rogers to discuss ascospore discharge in a pyrenomycetous fungus of interest to her.

Former Alumnus visits Plant Pathology

Dr. Wei-Young Wang a 1985 Ph.D. graduate of Plant Patholgy came for a vist this summer.
After graduating he went to Tawain working for The Forestry Research Institute in Taipei, Taiwan. In 1996 his family immigrated to New Zealand. He currently resides in New Zealand and is working for PF Olsen and Company Ltd, Rotorua as the International Investment Manager and Seed Orchard Manager.

http://www.pfolsen.com/nz_index.php? sect=mtt&inc=headoffice

The judges had a difficult time deciding which image to select from among 15 excellent entries submitted in August. After considerable deliberation, they declared the winner to be Lindsey du Toit, WSU vegetable seed pathologist, at the WSU-NWREC in Mount Vernon. Her winning entry is of the onion seed crop in the Columbia Basin. It was taken in summer 2003 near Quincy, WA. Thanks to everyone who took the time to enter. Please consider entering images in the September contest. The theme is "Scenes of your area, both rural and urban" (No pictures of Mount Rainier, please.) See the rules and take a look at the winning entry at http://ext.wsu.edu/fs/

WSU Adds over 800 Extension Publications to PMN Database

WSU has joined several other of the Plant Management Network's (PMN) land-grant partners by indexing over 800 of WSU web based extension publications in to the PMN Plant Science Database http://www.plantmanagementnetwork.org/search/.
This brings the total number of documents in the database to 4,000 including journal articles, extension fact sheets, product listings, books, and other agriculture resources.

Mike Adams & Jack Rogers Receive Awards

The Department of Plant Pathology gathered to honor Jack Rogers, who received the Mycological Society of America's Distinguished Mycologist Award, and Mike Adams, who has achieved 30 years of service to WSU!

Mike Adams received a certificate of Appreciation for 30 years of service to Washington State University and a very nice WSU watch.

Congratulations & thanks Mike!

Dr. Rogers received the Distinguished Mycologist Award for 2004. The Distinguished Mycologist Award is presented annually to an individual who has established an outstanding mycological career. This is one of the highest awards bestowed by the Mycological Society of America (MSA) and marks a distinguished career. Nominees for the award are evaluated on the basis of quality, originality, and quantity of their published research, and on the basis of service to the MSA or to the field of mycology in general. Recipients of this award include the most influential mycologists in North America. Most of the recipients are past presidents of MSA, and all are internationally recognized authorities in their respective areas of research.

Congratulations Dr. Rogers!

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2004 Statewide Plant Pathology Meeting

The 2004 Statewide Plant Pathology meeting was held in LaConner, WA.
Plant Pathology faculty, graduate students, and post docs from around the state attended the meeting.

To see more photos of the event click here.

Three faculty members in the department participated in the State 4-H Conference presentation on behalf of Plant Pathology: Drs. Pat Okubara, Hanu Pappu, and Jack Rogers.

Six students from various WA counties and two extension specialists visited the department on June 29, 2004. During the 2 hour session, Dr. Rogers gave the students a tour of the WSU Mycological Herbarium and explained why we collect, preserve and conserve fungi. Dr. Pappu took the students on a journey into wonderful world of plant viruses where the students experienced a multimedia presentation on the impact of viruses and viral diseases on crops, entitled "Plants do get colds and fevers!" Dr. Okubara organized a discussion about plant immunity to diseases and the pros and cons of biological control. Students had an opportunity to to look at live plants with and without root disease so they can see the impact of disease on the above-ground plant and then look at the roots. They got to see how a computer program is used to measure roots and the impact of diseases on root growth.

Dr. Pat Okubara discusses plant immunity to diseases

Dr. Jack Rogers gives tour of the Mycological Herbarium.

For more photos click here

Hajime Akamatsu receives the 2004 Young Scientist Award

Dr. Hajime Akamatsu was recently awarded the 2004 Young Scientist Award by the Phytopathological Society of Japan. This annual award recognizes the contributions of three scientists under the age of 35 to the field of plant pathology in Japan. Awards were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Japanese Phytopathological Society in April 2004 and abstracts of awardees research will appear in an upcoming volume of the Journal of General Plant Pathology. Congratulations Hajime!!

One of the major obstacles confronting plant pathologist Tim Murray (left) and geneticist Steve Jones in their quest for perennial wheat is the time required for field testing. Work in the greenhouse helps to reduce that time.

Photo by Shelly Hanks

No matter what you have on the stereo or how preoccupied you are with your week at work or with the upcoming football game or whatever else might pull you back to Pullman for the weekend, as you drive through eastern Washington, you can’t help but be absorbed by those endless stretches of fields, those fields that just go on forever. Sometimes they’re covered with snow and nearly featureless, a monotonous infinity broken only by a distant cluster of buildings or a spectral windmill left behind by another time. Sometimes they’re bright spring and startlingly green. Sometimes they’re absolutely bare, denied even the Russian thistle or bunchgrass tough enough to make it here where rainfall can be as little as eight inches a year, every little green thing rod-weeded or herbicide-sprayed in order to preserve as much precious moisture as possible so that a crop of wheat can be teased from the arid soil next year. And sometimes those fields are all in motion, the relentless prevailing wind out of the southwest lifting the fine particles of soil loose from the surface, blowing them, by the thousands of tons, in a billowing, murky cloud, eastward to wherever the wind drops them.

Steve Jones and Tim Murray want to change all this.

For complete story click here

Olga Mavrodi Receives the Hariett B. Rigas Award

Olga Mavrodi, Ph.D. student with the Dept. of Plant Pathology has been selected to receive the Harriett B. Rigas Award on behalf of the Washington State University Association for Faculty Women. Her academic performance,research and scholarship, and her promise of future professional leadership demonstrate truly exceptional achievement.

She will be honored at the annual AFW Graduate Awards ceremony and reception which will be held on Thursday, April 8, at 5:30 PM in the Lewis Alumni Center on the WSU Pullman campus.

Congratulations Olga!

Pictured above (left to right):
Jerald Pataky, Tim Murray

Invited Guest Speaker for PLP 515 Spring Seminar Series

Jerald Pataky was the invited speaker for the PLP Seminar series. He is a Professor in the Department of Crop Sciences at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois
The title of his seminar was: "Current concerns about simply-inherited resistance in sweet corn "
For more photos of the event click here.

For more information on Dr. Pataky you can click here.

Pictured above: (left to right):
Dr. Xianming Chen, Mary Moore, and
Dr. Roland Line

Mary Moore Retires from Plant Pathololgy

Mary Moore, Lab Technician for Plant Pathology retired at the end of February, after working for Dr. Chen and Dr. Line for the last five years.

The Department of Plant Pathology gave a going away party for Mary. Many people attended to share in saying farewell to Mary.
To see more photos click here.

Good luck in your future Mary.

Visiting Scientist from Korea

Dr. Sang-Dal Kim is a visiting scientist from Yeungnam University, Kyongsan, Korea. He will be working in the laboratory of Dr. Linda Thomashow. He wil be conducting research in the area of biological control. With his expertise in the development of improved biologiical control strains of Pseudomonas, he is likely to contribute a fresh perspective on biological control of pathogenic fungi.

Katie Murray Receives Student of the Year Award

Katie Murray, Tech. Assistant I for the Plant Pathology Department has received the award "Student of the Year" at Pullman High School. The award is given by the Pullman Rotary Club. She has maintained a 3.97 and plans to enroll in Carrol College in Helena, Mont., this fall. She is considerring a major in architecture. At Pullman High School she has taken honors English, world literature, geometry, calculus and chemistry. For 3 years she competed on the varsity cross country team and won Most Inspirational and Most Improved awards. She also participated in the Key club and Future Business Leaders of America for a year and was a member of the Spanish Club for two years. For her Senior Project, she reviewed the renovation of Thompson Hall on the Washington State University campus. She is active in the Sacred Heart Parish Youth group, and as a volunteer at Pullman Memorial Hospital and at the Girl Scout Summer Camp on Lake Coeur d' Alene.

Congratulations Katie!

Meet your New Co-Workers

Hajime Akamatsu recently joined the Department of Plant Pathology, Washington State University as a post-doctoral research associate. Hajime is working with Tobin Peever on Molecular genetics of plant pathogenic fungi, especially Alternaria and Ascochyta species. Fungal transformation and gene tagging by restriction enzyme-mediated integration (REMI) mutagenesis. Karyotype analysis of fungi using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis.

He received his B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Plant Pathology from Tottori University, Tottori, Japan. His Ph.D. dissertation entitled "Gene Tagging in Alternaria alternata Pathogens and its Application" was completed under the direction of Keisuke Kohmoto, Hiroshi Otani and Motoichiro Kodama.

Patrick Schaefer came to Plant pathology from a small city in the north of Giessen, Germany. He is working with Dr. R. James Cook and Dr. Diter von Wettstein. His research is concentrated on further development of barley that is transformed with an endochitinase of Trichoderma harzianum. These transformants have been shown to express resistance against the root pathogens R. solani and R. oryzae. In a molecular approach homozygous plants will be isolated and used for the development of high yielding cultivars with resistance against R. solani and R. oryzae for use in direct seed cropping system.

He earned his Doctor of Agricultural Science in November 2003 at the Justus-Liebig-University in Giessen. There he worked at the Institute of Phytopthology and Applied Zoology.

Research interests include: epidemiology; chemical and biological control; postharvest pathology; seed pathology; diseases of vegetables; crop loss assessment; disease detection and diagnosis.