CU's Bergstrom named president of national plant pathology association

Gary C. Bergstrom, Cornell professor of plant pathology, has been named president of the American Phytopathological Society (APS) for 2003-04.

He becomes the society's 95th president and the 10th member of Cornell's faculty to hold the post since 1908, when the society was founded. APS is the national, professional organization for plant pathologists.

Bergstrom, who studies cereal and forage crop diseases, joined the Cornell faculty in 1981 as an assistant professor, and he became an associate professor in 1987 and a professor in 1995.

As a plant pathologist, Bergstrom has designed educational programs that improve the expertise of Cornell Cooperative Extension educators, certified crop advisers and field crop producers. He works with agronomists, plant breeders and other plant-protection scientists to evaluate cultural, biological and chemical disease-control strategies as a component of integrated crop management for New York farms. Bergstrom is widely respected for his research findings on the epidemiology and management of wheat and corn diseases.

Bergstrom received his bachelor of science degree in microbiology (1975) and master of science in plant pathology degree (1978) from Purdue University, and he earned a doctorate in plant pathology from the University of Kentucky (1981).

He has been an active member of the APS since 1976, and he has held many leadership positions with the association. He has served as director of its Office of Public Affairs and Education; senior editor of APS Press; and president of the society's Northeastern Division.

The APS, based in St. Paul, Minn. is a professional scientific organization devoted to the study of plant diseases and controlling those diseases. The society, which has 5,000 members worldwide, will celebrate its centennial in 2008. Cornell's Department of Plant Pathology was founded in 1907, under the leadership of Herbert H. Whetzel, and it was the nation's first academic department of plant pathology.

Here are the other Cornell plant pathologists who have served as president of the APS and the years they served: Whetzel (1915), Donald Reddick (1921), Mortimer F. Barrus (1927), Charles Chupp (1940), R.S. Kirby (1948), A. Watt Dimock (1969), Durwood F. Bateman (1978), William E. Fry (1996) and Steven A. Slack (2001).