Material for the Newsletter is invited from individual members of ISPP,
Associated Societies, Council members, Chairs of all Committees and
representatives of Affiliated Societies and Supporting Organisations.
Editor: Brian J Deverall,
(E-mail)
In this issue:
Education
and teaching initiatives
BRITISH
MYCOLOGICAL SOCIETY (BMS) AND SCHOOLS
The BMS has developed a web-site for school
children introducing them to fungal biology and related areas, and how to
start exploring the subjects. It is at ( http://www.fungi4schools.org
).
STUDENT MANUALS THROUGH SLUG
Thi Hoa Pham ( t.pham11@pgrad.unimelb.edu.au
) is
studying plant pathology in a Master's course at the University of
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and has participated in a program for
Young Australian Achievement (YAA). From work with students from many
countries, including China, Germany, India, Vietnam and Australia, a
series of laboratory manuals have been produced. These are being marketed
this year through SLUG at ( www.scyagenics.com
).
Hoa believes that the manuals provide useful
sources of key information for students and others working in laboratories
using biological, chemical, biochemical and molecular techniques. Parts of
special relevance for plant pathology students are on microscopy, tissue
sectioning and handling DNA.
APS TEACHING RESOURCES FOR PLANT PATHOLOGY
The American Phytopathological Society (APS)
advises about two books for courses on plant pathology ( http://www.shopapspress.org/teaching-materials.html
).
One is a 2006 publication entitled "Essential
Plant Pathology" by Gail Schumann and Cleo D'Arcy. It is stated to be
a refreshing alternative for introductory plant pathology courses, and
also a great resource for Master Gardener training programs. It comes with
a CD-Rom, and is priced at US$79.95.
The other is a 2007 publication "The Study of
Plant Disease Epidemics" by Laurence V Madden, Gareth Hughes and
Frank van den Bosch. This is presented as a comprehensive textbook, which
also provides much detail on how to describe, compare, analyze, and
predict epidemics of disease in order to develop and test control
strategies and tactics. It is US$89.
3rd
Asian Conference on Plant Pathology
This ACPP conference ( www.3rdacpp.com
) was held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, and closed on 23 August 2007. It was
organised by The Indonesian Phytopathological Society and the Department
of Plant Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Gadjah Mada University,
Yogyakarta, on behalf of the Asian Association of Societies for Plant
Pathology (AASPP). The theme was "The role of plant pathology in
rapidly globalizing economies of Asia".
One hundred and seventy six plant pathologists
from 19 countries participated. Eleven concurrent sessions were held.
Ninety seven delegates including 6 invited speakers made oral
presentations in the concurrent sessions, and 38 posters were presented in
the poster session. The local organizing committee published proceedings
in 344 pages, including 206 extended summaries.
ISPP President Richard Falloon addressed the
conference at the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. ISPP Secretary-General
Greg Johnson and Professor David Guest from the University of Sydney,
Australia, also attended the conference and the meeting of the AASPP House
of Delegates.
The next ACPP conference wil be organised by the
Australasian Plant Pathology Society and will be held in Darwin, Northern
Territory, Australia, in 2011.
Wenhua Tang ( wenhuatang@vip.sohu.com
), ISPP Vice-President
APS
Officers and Its Centenary
The American Phytopathological Society (APS) has
announced its officers for 2007-2008, and they will serve as the society
celebrates its 100th anniversary, which will be officially commemorated at
the APS Centennial Meeting from 26-30 July 2008 in Minneapolis, Minnesota,
USA (see "Coming Events").
The new APS President is Raymond D Martyn Jr, a
plant pathology professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology
at Purdue University. He succeeds Jan E Leach, of Colorado State
University, who now serves as immediate past president.
James W. Moyer, of North Carolina State
University, is president-elect, Barbara Christ, of Pennsylvania State
University, is vice president, Danise T Beadle, of Bayer CropScience, is
secretary and Randall C Rowe, of Ohio State University, treasurer.
A complete listing of the 2007-2008 APS council is
at ( http://www.apsnet.org/directories/council.cfm
).
Information on the APS centennial activities is
available at ( http://www.apsnet.org/centennial
).
Fruit
hospital in Tien Giang, Vietnam
Greg Johnson, ISPP Secretary-General, forwarded
this information from ( http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/showarticle.php?num=01AGR150907
).
An office of the southern Fruit Research Institute
at Long Dinh Commune, Chau Thanh District, in the southern province of
Tien Giang, Vietnam, was established to help farmers grow more productive
fruit trees. The office now has become well-known as the fruit hospital,
with Le Thi Thu Hong as director. More than 100 staff members from the
institute have registered to do volunteer work for the hospital.
Although farmers from the Mekong Delta region are
very good at growing fruit trees, many of them do not know how to tackle
strange plant diseases. Since the hospital's opening three months ago, the
number of people it has helped is uncountable. Farmers either take their
diseased fruit to the office, or they invite a doctor to look at their
trees. It takes about 10-30 minutes for a doctor to check a tree and
diagnose the disease. They also answer the farmers' relevant questions.
The mail address at the hospital ( benhviencay@yahoo.com
) is always busy with questions from farmers.
Besides helping farmers treat the diseases, the
doctors also educate people so they may become nurses for a group of
farmers. If a disease appears on fruit trees in that region, the nurses
living there can take pictures and send them to the hospital to receive
instructions.
Grapevine
Genome Decoded
The complete genome sequence for the Pinot Noir
grapevine (Vitis vitifera) is the first one produced for a fruit crop and
the fourth for a flowering plant after rice, Arabidopsis and poplar. A
French-Italian Public Consortium for Grapevine Genome Characterization has
published the evidence in a Nature paper entitled "The grapevine
genome sequence suggests ancestral hexaploidization in major angiosperm
phyla". See ( http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nature06148.pdf
).
Among the findings, many gene families were
discovered for aroma and taste such as for terpenes and tannins, and
multiple copies of genes encoding enzymes for the biosynthesis of the
phytoalexin resveratrol were also found. The large number of gene families
was attributed to the selection and hybridization of grapevines during
thousands of years.
ISPP
Executive Committee Meeting
The 3rd ISPP Executive Committee (EC) Meeting for
the period 2003-2008 meets in Adelaide, South Australia, on 23-24
September 2007, before the meeting of the Australasian Plant Pathology
Society which takes place there from 24-27 September 2007. All members of
the ISPP Executive plus the Business Manager and the Newsletter Editor are
attending.
Likely matters to be considered are:
1 Welcome and Agreement of Agenda 2 Minutes of the
2nd EC Meeting, Turin, Italy, May, 2006 3 President's Report 4 ISPP
Programme Priorities 5 Report, 3rd Asian Conference for Plant Pathology
2007 6 Report from the ICPP2008 committee 7 Secretary's Report 8
Treasurer's Report 9 Business Manager Report 10 Newsletter Report 11 ISPP
administration UK Charity Status 12 Election of 2008-2013 ISPP Executive
13 Formalities for selection of venue for ICPP2013 14 World Directory of
Plant Pathologists 15 Task Force on Global Food Security 16 China/Taiwan
17 Jakob Eriksson Prize 18 Membership Int'l Association of Plant
Protection Societies 19 Any other business 20 Venue/timing of next EC
Meeting - Turin - 8/2008
Bacterial
Blight of Rice
Jinsheng Wang ( wangjsh@njau.edu.cn
), Chairman, Department of Plant Pathology, Nanjing Agricultural
University, Nanjing 210095, China, advises that the 2nd International
Conference for Bacterial Blight of Rice is in Nanjing from 1-3 October
2007. By 5 September, over forty scientists from Bangladesh, France,
India, Japan, Korea, Singapore, the Philippines and the USA, and thirty
five from China had registered to attend.
This is the most destructive bacterial disease of
rice, occurring frequently on susceptible varieties and seriously on
hybrid cultivars in rice-growing countries worldwide, especially in Asia
and in some parts of Africa. Population biology, cell biology, molecular
biology and some new safety management strategies will be addressed. The
final program is at ( http://icbb2007.njau.edu.cn
).
Product
Stewardship Seminar In Glasgow
"The role of crop protection product
stewardship in agriculture" is the title of a seminar on 16 October
2007, organised by the Carlton Consultancy with CSL, Bayer CropScience and
Syngenta and at the XVI International Plant Protection Congress in
Glasgow, UK (see "Coming Events"). It will explore the role of
product stewardship in agriculture with speakers from international
organizations including the EPA, the EU Commission, the Philippines
Fertilizer and Pesticide Authority, the crop protection industry and a
range of other stakeholders.
More information and registration details can be
found on the BCPC website: ( http://www.bcpc.org/IPPC2007/Seminars
).
Silicon
in Agriculture
The University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) and the
South African Sugarcane Research Institute (SASRI) are hosting the IV
Silicon in Agriculture Conference to be held on the Wild Coast, KwaZulu-Natal,
South Africa from 26-31 October 2008. See "Coming Events".
The general theme of the conference is "The
Integrated Use of Silicon in Crop Production" and the purpose of the
conference is to bring together academia, researchers and industrial
specialists. They will present their latest scientific findings, and
deliberate issues pertaining to silicon (Si) research in production of
food and industrial crops throughout the world.
Readers are cordially invited to attend this event
and to visit the website for further details at ( www.siliconconference.org.za
).
Rhizoctonia
solani AG-3
Paulo Ceresini ( paulo.ceresini@agrl.ethz.ch
) advised about his joint paper through BioMed Central ( http://www.biomedcentral.com
) which is an independent online publishing house committed to providing
immediate free access to peer-reviewed biological and medical research and
reviews. The paper is published under open access, meaning that the full
text can be read without a subscription. See ( http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2148/7/163/pdf
).
Paulo C Ceresini, H David Shew, Timothy Y James,
Rytas J Vilgalys, Marc A Cubeta (2007) Phylogeography of the Solanaceae-infecting
Basidiomycota fungus Rhizoctonia solani AG-3 based on sequence analysis of
two nuclear DNA loci. BioMed Central Evolutionary Biology 7, 163.
Urban
Agriculture
This is the title of a service providing a review
of daily news pertinent to the community of practitioners and developers
who are planning and practising alternative farming in cities. See ( http://www.urbanagriculture-news.com
). Access to the news service and the newsletter is free.
Ray Lauzzana, Urban Agriculture News, Penrose
Press, PO 470925, San Francisco, California 94147, USA.
Coming
Events
2nd International Conference on Bacterial Blight
of Rice (ICBB) in Nanjing, China. 1-3 October 2007. See ( http://icbb2007.njau.edu.cn
).
II International Symposium on Tomato Diseases in
Kusadasi, Turkey. 8-12 October 2007. See ( www.2istd.ege.edu.tr
).
AAB Advances in Pest Management at Studley Castle,
Warwickshire, UK. 11 October 2007. See ( http://www.aab.org.uk/contentok.php?id=184&basket=wwsshowconflist
).
XVIth International Plant Protection Congress (IPPC)
in Glasgow, United Kingdom. 15-18 October 2007. See ( www.bcpc.org/iapps2007
).
14th International Botrytis Symposium in Cape
Town, South Africa. 21-26 October 2007. See ( http://academic.sun.ac.za/botrytis2007/
).
Borers and Rots in Eucalypts Conference in Perth,
Western Australia. 5-7 November 2007. See ( www.promaco.com.au/2007/borers
).
First Meeting of International Phytoplasmologist
Working Group (IPWG) in Bologna, Italy. 12-15 November 2007. See ( http://www.mpunion.com
).
6th World Avocado Congress in Vina del Mar, Chile.
12-16 November 2007. See (www.worldavocadocongress.com).
20th Venezuelan Congress of Phytopathology in
Yaracuy State, Venezuela. 13-16 November 2007. See ( www.sovefit.org
).
VI International Pineapple Symposium in Joćo
Pessoa, Paraiba State, Brazil. 18-23 November 2007. Contact: Dr. Domingo
Haroldo Reinhardt, Embrapa Cassava & Tropical Fruits, Cruz das Almas,
Bahia, Brazil ( dharoldo@cnpmf.embrapa.br
). See ( www.ipsbrasil2007.com.br
).
Third International Conference on Plant Pathology
& 7th Biennial Meeting of Pakistan Phytopathological Society in the
University of Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan. 19-21 November 2007. See ( http://www.pu.edu.pk/conference/mppl-conference-07.asp
). Contact: Professor Dr Rukhsana Bajwa, Chairperson, Department of
Mycology & Plant Pathology, University of the Punjab, Lahore-54590,
Pakistan. Tel: +92 429231846-7. Fax: +92 429231187. E-mail: ( chairperson@mpp.pu.edu.pk
).
1st International Phytophthora Capsici Conference
in Islamorada, Florida, USA. 27-29 November 2007. See ( http://conferences.dce.ufl.edu/pcap
).
5th Canadian Workshop on Fusarium Head Blight in
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. 27-30 November 2007. See ( atekauz@agr.cg.ca
).
2007 National Fusarium Head Blight Forum in Kansas
City, Missouri, USA. 2-4 December 2007. Contact ( scabusa@scabusa.org
). See ( www.scabusa.org/forum07.html
).
AAB (Association of Applied Biologists) Advances
in Nematology at the Linnean Society, London, United Kingdom. 11 December
2007. See ( http://www.aab.org.uk/contentok.php?id=184&basket=wwsshowconflist
).
National Soybean Rust Symposium in Louisville,
Kentucky, USA. 12-14 December 2007. Contact ( aps@scisoc.org
). See ( www.apsnet.org ).
AAB International Advances in Pesticide
Application 2008 at Robinson College, Cambridge, United Kingdom. 9-11
January 2008. See ( http://www.aab.org.uk/contentok.php?id=184&basket=wwsshowconflist
).
Plant Innate Immunity (X2) at Keystone Resort,
Keystone, Colorado, USA. 10-15 February 2008. www.keystonesymposia.org/Meetings/viewMeetings.cfm?MeetingID=932
Third International Late Blight Conference 2008 in
Beijing, China. 3-6 April 2008. See ( http://research.cip.cgiar.org/typo3/web/index.php?id=1053
).
International Conference on Banana and Plantain in
Africa: Harnessing International Partnerships to Increase Research Impact
in Mombasa, Kenya. 7-10 April 2008. See ( http://www.banana2008.com
).
6th International Seed Testing Association Seed
Health Symposium at Kruger National Park, South Africa. 14-18 April
2008. www.up.ac.za/conferences/ielc
12th International Symposium on Virus Diseases of
Ornamental Plants at Van der Valk Hotel, Haarlem, The Netherlands. 20-24
April 2008 www.plant-virology.nl/ISVDOP12
VIII Symposium on Plant Biotechnology. Santa
Clara, Villa Clara, Cuba. 23-25 April 2008. http://simposio.ibp.co.cu
13th International Congress on Infectious Diseases
(ICID) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 19-22 June 2008. See ( http://www.isid.org/13th_icid
).
5th International Congress of Nematology in
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. 13-18 July 2008. See ( www.5icn.org/
).
The 16th Congress of the Federation of European
Societies of Plant Biology (FESPB) in Tampere, Finland. 17-22 August 2008.
See ( http://www.fespb2008.org ).
Also satellite symposium on Peroxidases. 20-23 August 2008. See ( http://www.peroxidase2008.org
).
4th International Symposium on Rhizoctonia in
Berlin, Germany. 20-23 August 2008. See ( http://rhizoctonia.org
).
3rd International Phytophthora/Pythium Workshop in
association with the 9th ICPP-2008 in Torino, Italy. 23-24 August 2008.
See ( www.aphis.usda.gov/plant_health/identification/phytophthora
).
APS Centennial Meeting, Minneapolis in Minnesota,
USA. 26-30 July 2008. Contact: (aps@scisoc.org). See ( http://meeting.apsnet.org/centennial/default.cfm
).
9th International Congress of Plant Pathology (ICPP
2008) in Torino, Italy. 24-29 August 2008. Contact: Congress Secretariat,
Valentina Communication, Via Cibrario 27, 10143 Torino, Italy. Phone:
+39-0114374250; Fax: +39-0114374318; e-mail: ( info@icpp2008.org
). See ( www.icpp2008.org ).
APS Caribbean Division Meeting, part of the 6th
International Scientific Seminar on Plant Health, in Havana, Cuba. 22-26
September 2008. Contact: ( aps@scisoc.org
). See ( www.apsnet.org ).
16th Ornamental Workshop on Diseases and Pests in
Hendersonville, North Carolina, USA. 22-26 September 2008. See ( www.cals.ncsu.edu/plantpath/activities/societies/ornamental
).
10th International Fusarium Workshop in Alghero,
Sardinia, Italy. 30 September-2 October 2008. See ( www.cdl.umn.edu/scab/10th_fhb_wkshp.htm
).
IV International Silicon in Agriculture Conference
at Wild Coast Sun, Port Edward, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. 26-31 October
2008. See ( www.siliconconference.org.za
).
International Forest Biosecurity Conference,
incorporating the 6th International Forest Vegetation Management
Conference, in Rotorua, New Zealand. 16-20 March 2009. See ( www.ensisjv.com/forestbiosecurity
). Contact: Dr Brian Richardson, General Manager, Ensis Forest Biosecurity
and Protection, Private Bag 3020, Rotorua, New Zealand. Phone:
+64-7-343-5516; Fax: +64-7-343-5333; Mobile: 021-913-221.
