Research in the Plant Pathology Department seeks answers to many plant disease problems in the general areas of disease management, forest pathology, genetics of disease resistance, air pollution, host parasite interactions, bacteriology, mycology, nematology, and virology.

Examples of specific research are: cloning disease response genes; molecular genetics; biological control; ecology of microorganism; and population ecology, systematics, and genetics of fungi.

Our faculty do research in such diverse areas as: fungi growing from the timbers of a salvaged clipper ship, sugarcane bacilliform viruses, the mapping and cloning of resistance genes in soybean to soybean cyst nematode, host response genes associated with resistance reactions in small grain diseases, and the ecology and management of numerous pathogens.