The Department of Plant Pathology has 24 graduate faculty, many of them have national and international reputations for outstanding research and teaching. It also has support staff and numerous visiting and postdoctoral scientists. About half of the graduate students are U.S. citizens and half are international.

Several federal research agency scientists from the U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and the United States Forest Service, are housed on the St. Paul Campus of the University of Minnesota and have adjunct graduate faculty status in the Plant Pathology Department. 

Adjunct faculty members include scientists at the USDA Agricultural Research Service's National Cereal Disease Laboratory (formerly the Cereal Rust Laboratory), the U.S. Forest Service Forestry Sciences Laboratory, and in the USDA, ARS Plant Sciences Research Unit housed in departmental space.

The Department of Plant Pathology has a strong research and teaching emphasis in genetically-controlled disease resistance, molecular genetics and genomics, control of diseases caused by biotic pathogens (fungi, viruses, nematodes and bacteria), wood deterioration, and in the physiology and molecular biology of plant-microbe interactions.

Research areas include, but are not limited to,

• genetics of disease resistance at the molecular, cellular, and whole plant levels;
  
• plant disease management;
  
• microbial ecology;
  
• biological control;
  
• population genetics;
  
• plant virology; and
  
• air pollution and global climate change.