News and announcements from all on any aspect of Plant Pathology are
invited for the Newsletter. Contributions from the ISPP Executive,
Council and Subject Matter Committees, Associated Societies and
Supporting Organisations are requested.
Professor Dr Johan Dekker passed away on 5 June 2010
On Saturday 5
June, the sad news arrived that Professor Johan Dekker had passed away.
Professor Dekker was a former head of the Laboratory of Phytopathology
of Wageningen University and he was President of the International
Society for Plant Pathology (ISPP) from 1983 until 1988. He continued to
serve ISPP as Immediate-Past-President until 1993 and he was made an
Honorary Member of ISPP in 1998. He was a Fellow of the American
Phytopathological Society and also received a royal award for public
service.
Johan Dekker was born on 26 November 1925 in ’s-Heerenhoek, Zeeland, in
the south-west of the Netherlands where he grew up on a farm. After
finishing grammar school (gymnasium β) during the Second World War he
started his studies at Wageningen University, where he majored in
Tropical Agronomy and Phytopathology. In 1953 he received his MSc degree
and in 1957 his PhD for research on the application of antibiotics to
cure Ascochyta pisi on pea. After his PhD he went for two years on
sabbatical to the USA to get further training in phytopathological
research in Berkeley and Ithaca. In 1959 he returned to the Netherlands
where he became appointed as assistant professor at the laboratory of
Phytopathology. In 1969 he succeeded Professor Oort as full professor of
Phytopathology. Under his leadership research on internal therapy of
plants blossomed. The first systemic fungicides reached the market and
he was one of the first to warn about the risks of development of
resistance against these compounds. This lead to collaboration with the
crop protection industry.
The student numbers enrolled at Wageningen University steadily increased
but Johan remained to examine all courses personally. Johan was an
inspiring teacher and I still clearly remember his lectures as a student
at Wageningen University in the 1970s.
Johan organised with his colleagues many international courses about
crop protection in many parts of the world. In the laboratory he
stimulated new research themes including research on epidemiology (with
Professor Zadoks and Dr Frinking), soil-borne pathogens (with Dr Bollen
and Dr Limonard), host-pathogen interactions (with Professor Fuchs) and
) resistance against fungicides (with Dr Davidse and Dr de Waard).
Johan was a very good organizer and manager. In Wageningen University he
was very active as dean and often he replaced the rector magnificus
during ceremonies. He was active in various teaching and research
committees. He was also a member of the board of many research
Institutes including the Institute for Phytopathological Research,
Wageningen, and the Institute Willie Commelin Scholten, Baarn. He was
also a member of the board of several scientific journals including the
Netherlands Journal of Plant Pathology, Phytopathology, Physiological
Plant Pathology and the Journal of Plant Protection in the Tropics.
He had a strong interest in crop protection in the tropics. He
collaborated with research institutes in Indonesia, Kenya and Nicaragua.
During his presidency of the International Society for Plant Pathology
he organized the International Congress of Plant Pathology in Kyoto in
1988. His contributions to crop protection were well recognized
internationally which is reflected in his international prizes. He was
Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society and he received the
Professor van den Brande prize in 1988. In 1989 Johan Dekker received a
royal award for many public services: “Orde van de Nederlandse Leeuw”.
Johan was always interested in people irrespective of whether they were
BSc, MSc, PhD students or colleagues. He always created a social
atmosphere in the lab where everybody liked to work. He was always
present at social events including lab outings and PhD parties. Also
after his retirement Johan kept visiting the Phytopathology Laboratory.
He always responded to Christmas cards he received from the Laboratory
until last year. Johan also experienced personal tragedies. Soon after
his retirement in 1989 his wife Tiny died and Johan went through one of
the most difficult periods of his life. Happily he met Hannie with whom
he became happy again and traveled to many places in the world.
Last year Johan became very ill but he recovered again. Johan had a very
strong will to survive. In that respect he was a real Dutchman (Zeeuw)
living with the Latin saying “luctor er emergo”. In early May, I showed
Johan the new laboratory to which we had moved last year. Johan clearly
enjoyed this excursion very much. However, he was already very ill and
at the end of the excursion Johan told me that he had a very good life
with his work at the Laboratory of Phytopathology, his colleagues, his
international friends, but above all Tiny, Hannie, his children and
grandchildren.
We will always remember him as the friendly charismatic person who
worked very hard and led the Laboratory of Phytopathology between 1969
and 1989 and to whom we owe very much. We wish Hannie, children and
grandchildren much strength with carrying the loss of Johan.
Pierre J G M de Wit, Laboratory of Phytopathology, Wageningen University
Professor Dekker: memories from one student
The loss of Professor Johan Dekker makes all of us feel sorry and sad.
While I have left to Pierre De Wit, who worked with Professor Johan
Dekker for so many years, the task of remembering his high profile as
researcher, I wish to share with the scientific community some personal
thoughts. I met Professor Johan Dekker in 1980, when I had the chance to
follow the First International Course on Fungicide Resistance organized
by him at Wageningen and to spend about one year, as a post-doc, in his
laboratory in 1981-1982. Professor Dekker’s lab was indeed the best
place to go and work on many aspects related to fungicides. I was
assigned to work with Dr Maarten de Waard, but Professor Dekker was
always very interested in my research and in the results obtained.
Since the first time I met him, I was impressed by his kindness, his
natural way to make people, including young researchers, feel good,
showing interest in their work. He was a real gentleman, open to
discussion, always ready to share views and to offer assistance and
advice. He gave special attention to young researchers coming from small
countries and small labs. His lab was full of foreign students and his
house was always open to us.
I remember him working long hours, being in the lab during week-ends,
always interested to know what it was going on. I’ll never forget the
day when he told me that, being Italian, I did not have to follow the
rigid Dutch system, with appointments made weeks in advance. I could
just knock on his door if I needed some advice from him. I discovered
that he spent a few months, as a student, in Italy, at Vercelli, working
on rice. He appreciated very much Italy and our life style and
understood well our attitude. We kept in contact and met so many times
all over the world. He visited Italy and our labs many times.My last memory is a very nice letter that he wrote to me on the
occasion of the 9th International Congress of Plant Pathology
in 2008. He could not attend the Congress because he was starting to
suffer health problems. I’m sure to interpreter the feelings of so many
people who had the chance to meet him, and particularly of all who
worked in his lab, also from foreign countries, by saying that we all
will miss Professor Johan Dekker and will bring with us his memory for
the rest of our lives. The period spent in his lab for sure made a
change in the professional life of all of us.
Lodovica Gullino, University of Torino, and President of the
International Society for Plant Pathology
Wageningen in about 1981 with the late Johan Dekker in the centre in the
front row and Lodovica Gullino on the left in the second row.
Biological Control of Postharvest Diseases – International Workshop in
the USA
An International Workshop on
Biological Control of Postharvest Diseases
will be held in West Virginia, USA, in October 2010. It is sponsored by
BARD and the International Society of Horticultural Sciences in
collaboration with several of its commissions. It will provide an
opportunity to review the progress that has been made since the first
international BARD sponsored workshop on postharvest biocontrol 20 years
ago in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Since then, there has been a global
effort to identify new methods for managing postharvest diseases based
on the use of microbial antagonists that inhabit fruit surfaces.
The coming workshop will identify paradigms, concepts and scientific
questions that will drive postharvest biocontrol research in the next
ten to twenty years. It will explore not only the biology of postharvest
biocontrol agents but also will address the use of natural compounds as
additives or stand alone products. It will also facilitate the
interchange of information among leading scientists, commercial
companies and regulatory agencies in the field of biological control of
postharvest diseases of fruits and vegetables.
Pathogens and Quality of Crops and Wine (Patholux-Grapelux)
The effects of pathogens on food quality of crops and wine will be the
subject of the first conference on plant pathology held by the Centre de
Recherche Public Gabriel Lippman in Luxembourg in November 2010 (see:
“Coming Events”). The focus will be on monitoring, controlling and
detecting viruses, fungi and bacteria in agricultural commodities, and
their impact on quantity and quality, including nutritional and
toxicological aspects. Grapevine diseases and their control will also be
addressed. There will be keynote lectures and oral and poster
presentations. Young researchers presenting a poster or selected to give
a talk will participate free of charge.
A conference on rust fungi affecting forest trees was held in Florence,
Italy, from 3-6 May 2010. It was organized as a IUFRO Working Party and
its proceedings can be traced from a
forest pathology
web-site. The co-ordinator was Richard C Hamelin of the University of
British Columbia, Canada. He gave the keynote address on progress since
a meeting of the group four years ago and highlighted advances
particularly on genome sequencing of
Melampsora larici-populina.
An emphasis was on rust fungi affecting plantation forests. At this
conference, rust diseases of
Pinus spp. received attention both in presentations and on a field
trip in Tuscany. According to minutes of the business meetings, the
papers presented may be published as abstracts in a location yet to be
decided.
Detection of Myrtle Rust in Australia
Further to the note in the May 2010 issue of the ISPP Newsletter, the
Australasian Plant Pathology Society (APPS)
home page
now carries an APPS Press Release and a paper-in-press in
Australasian Plant Pathology
about myrtle rust Uredo rangelii
in Australia.
The Press Release warns of the dangers posed by the rust to much
Australian native vegetation and also states that APPS believes that
necessary funding and more and wider action are urgently needed to
counter the rust. APPS appeals for donations to assist in countering the
disease. The Press Release links to Further Reading, which covers global
literature and past and current reports and statements in Australia. A
more recent news article also can be found from the APPS home page.
The paper is Angus Carnegie, John Walker, Jonathan Lidbetter, Len
Tesoriero, Martin Horwood, Morag Glen and Michael Priest 2010. Uredo
rangelii, a taxon in the guava rust complex, newly recorded on Myrtaceae
in Australia. Australasian Plant
Pathology39: In Press.
This paper has been peer reviewed and accepted for publication but will
not be fully available until the carrying issue is completed.
The abstract covers the following. The rust was reported from
Agonis flexuosa,
Callistemon viminalis and
Syncarpia glomulifera.
U. rangelii is
morphologically distinct from
Puccinia psidii, the cause of guava rust, but DNA sequence data
place it in the P. psidii
complex. Surveys up to May 2010 detected
U. rangelii on cultivated
shrubs and trees at four properties (two cut flower farms and two
wholesale nurseries) on the Central Coast of New South Wales, with no
records in native forest so far.
Congratulations to Dr Gabrielle Persley
Gabrielle Persley was appointed as a Member in the General Division of
the Order of Australia as shown in a list of national Honours announced
on 14 June 2010.
The award was for service to science through advisory roles with a range
of national and international agricultural research organizations, and
through support for the development of livestock health, particularly in
Africa.
Early in her career Gabrielle was a plant pathologist working on virus
diseases of sugar cane in Brisbane. She is currently a member of the
Advisory Board for the ISPP/Springer journal “Food Security”. Her
affiliation in this position is International Livestock Research
Institute, Kenya, where she is
Senior Adviser
to the Director-General.
BGRI Technical Workshop and International Wheat Conference
The second Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) Technical Workshop and
8th International Wheat Conference (IWC) were held from 30
May-4 June 2010 in St Petersburg, Russia. The
BGRI meeting
was held over two days prior to the wheat conference (30-31 May), and
attracted approximately 300 delegates. This was the second in an
intended series of technical workshops focusing on the wheat rusts and
the varied international efforts that are now being scaled up to meet
current challenges posed by these diseases.
The major emphasis of the BGRI has been stem rust, and in particular
pathotype TTKSK (“Ug99”), which emerged in the Horn of Africa at the
turn of the millennium and posed real and immediate threats to regional
and global wheat production. The meeting was officially opened by Ms
Jeanie Laube-Borlaug, Chair of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative and
daughter of the late Dr Norman Borlaug. The opening ceremony featured
presentations on the wheat rust situation in Russia by Dr
Alex Morgounov (CIMMYT Turkey) and Dr
Nataliya Kurkova (Institute of Phytopathology, Russia). Seven sessions
then covered global perspectives in cereal
rusts, global climate change and projected impacts on rust
epidemiology, molecular studies of rust pathogens, rust pathogen
evolution, and the germplasm and tools available to advance rust
resistance breeding. Invited presentations provided updates on specific
projects and broad overviews of programs including global wheat rust
monitoring efforts co-ordinated through University of Sydney, FAO,
University of Aarhus, and the international centres CIMMYT and ICARDA.
Of significance were surveillance efforts targeting the “Ug99” stem rust
lineage, which is now known to comprise seven pathotypes and is present
in South Africa, east Africa, Yemen and Iran, suggesting unimpeded
migration (presumably wind-borne) throughout this entire region.
The conference also heard of the current status of leaf rust and yellow
rust, which are currently widespread and causing concern across many of
the globe’s wheat growing zones. Two panel discussions were held, one
focusing on the management of major and minor rust resistance genes, and
the second on seed systems to ensure delivery of rust resistant wheat to
farmers.
Particularly noteworthy was the presentation of the first Jeannie
Borlaug-Laube Women in Triticum Award, established in 2010 to provide
professional development opportunities for early career women working in
wheat. The five winners were: Maricelis Acevedo, currently working as a
post-doctoral fellow at the USDA-ARS, Aberdeen, Idaho, on screening
wheat landraces for stem rust resistance; Esraa Alwan, an MSc student
studying new sources of stem rust resistance in tetraploid wheat at
ICARDA in association with Aleppo University in Syria; Jemanesh Kifetew
Haile, at Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research on
identifying molecular markers linked to stem rust resistance in durum
wheat; Jessica Rutkoski, a PhD student studying genomic selection to
incorporate resistance to stem rust in wheat at Cornell University; and
Hale Ann Tufan, a PhD student characterizing the development of
Magnaporthe on wheat at the
John Innes Centre.
The four day wheat conference attracted a record attendance of 600
delegates. Speakers and poster presentations covered a wide variety of
topics of interest to all associated with wheat and wheat improvement.
Among sessions devoted to biotic stresses, the rusts were given less
attention in presented papers due to the emphasis placed on rust at the
prior workshop. A review of the workshop was presented to the
conference, and remaining oral and poster papers covered reviews and
research updates on disease issues ranging from root and crown diseases,
foliar necrotrophic pathogens and Fusarium head blight.
An added feature afforded by the conference venue was the opportunity to
visit the Vavilov Institute for Genetic Resources in St Petersburg. The
rich history of this institute, founded and developed by the legendary
Russian geneticist and botanist Academician Nikolai Vavilov, was
delightfully displayed and warmly presented by local colleagues.
Colin Wellings and Robert Park, Plant Breeding Institute, The University
of Sydney.
ISPP Plant Pathogenic Bacteria Committee
This ISPP Subject Matter Committee has been very active, having just
held on Reunion Island its 12th
International Conference,
where there were 162 participants from 43 countries, as illustrated
below. It also held a meeting to elect a new Committee under a new
Chair, Professor Gongyou Chen of Shanghai, China. ISPP thanks the
retiring Chair Philippe Prior of INRA, Reunion, for his past work.
For the new membership and their contact details, see the ISPP
plant pathogenic bacteria
page. The 13th meeting will be held in China in a few years’
time.
Access to Scientific Information
There is an organization called the
International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications.
It is involved with communication, knowledge and networks, with special
emphasis on the needs of developing and emerging countries. Their
national priorities for access to scientific information and information
are of particular concern. The Network also works on capacities to
handle knowledge with ICTs, and on co-operation and exchange of
information. Training in cognate aspects is also assisted.
From the home page, the “Directory of Organisations” button leads to a
database that lists and profiles organizations world-wide working to
help in access to information. From there links go to agriculture and
rural development, and also if desired to other branches of science.
Long and helpful lists then can be seen.
Potato Cyst Nematode
A symposium on potato cyst nematode will take place in the UK in
September 2010, as listed in “Coming Events”. It is being organized by
the
Association of Applied Biologists,
where the web-site gives access to full details.
Many aspects of the management of the nematode will be covered. There is
likely to be more emphasis on non-chemical control as a result of a
European Union directive to restrict or remove currently used
nematicides from the market by 2014.
“Diseases of Vegetable Crops in Australia” is edited by Denis Persley,
Tony Cooke and Susan House and was published by CSIRO in April 2010.
The book gives a diagnostic guide and key references for diseases
affecting vegetable crops. High amounts of detail are given for 36 major
and speciality crops. There are 304 pages, 190 of which have colour
plates. Because the book covers common and unusual crops and pathogens
across the wide range of climates in Australia, it also could be useful
in other countries. Furthermore, it has a chapter on diseases of Asian
vegetables.
See:
CSIRO Publishing,
and for members of the Australasian Plant Pathology Society see also
APPS.
Acknowledgements
I thank Peter Williamson for further work on a template for aiding the
production of the Newsletter, and Greg Johnson for his input.
Coming Events
The 2010 International Symposium on Advanced Biological Engineering in
Beijing, China.
18th Biennial Australasian Plant Pathology Meeting and 4th Asian
Conference for Plant Pathology at the Darwin Convention Centre, Darwin,
Northern Territory, Australia.
10th International Congress of Plant Pathology (ICPP2013) in Beijing,
China.
25-30 August 2013.
Contact: Professor You-Liang Peng, Department of Plant Pathology,
College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University,
Beijing 100193, PR China. Phone: +86-10-62733607; Fax: +86-10-62733607.
On Saturday 5
June, the sad news arrived that Professor Johan Dekker had passed away.
Professor Dekker was a former head of the Laboratory of Phytopathology
of Wageningen University and he was President of the International
Society for Plant Pathology (ISPP) from 1983 until 1988. He continued to
serve ISPP as Immediate-Past-President until 1993 and he was made an
Honorary Member of ISPP in 1998. He was a Fellow of the American
Phytopathological Society and also received a royal award for public
service.
