0:08 Jim: Hello and welcome back to the Plantopia podcast. I'm Jim Bradeen, professor of plant pathology and associate vice president for strategy at Colorado State University and our beautiful brand new CSU Spur Campus in Denver, Colorado. And I'm the host of Plantopia. Today we are going to hear from Don Mathre. Don is a professor emeritus from Montana State University. He had a very long and productive research and teaching career. He also had incredible administrative impacts. He twice served as department head and served a stint as the Research Associate Dean for Montana Agricultural Experiment Station. Don is a widely recognized expert on soil borne diseases, especially soil borne diseases of small grains. And he has a long publication history including serving as editor of the APS Compendium of Barley Diseases. Don is a fellow of the AAAS, the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And he has a long history of service and leadership and APS, the American Phytopathological Society. And his contributions have include included service on multiple editorial board services president of the APS Pacific Division, and as APS president in 1989. Don is also the namesake for the APS Don E. Mathre student travel award. So we've got a lot of ground to cover today. And Don, thank you so much for being with us. 1:49 Don: You're welcome. 1:52 Jim: So, Don, I'm struggling with really where to begin, because you really have had so many impacts. And there's so many things that I really want to know about your career and your perspective on our field. But I think really, in this case, like to start at the beginning of your professional beginning. Could you tell us a little bit about your academic background, and how you got into the field of plant pathology in the first place? 2:19 Jim: Sure, well, I grew up in Iowa and Kansas. My dad was a county agent. So I've always had some association with agriculture. Though I never lived on a farm but I went to Iowa State University I majored in botany. And during that time, I met my good wife Judy, and she was also a botany major. My starting in plant pathology occurred during this time because I worked for Artie Browning during the summers. And Artie is a well-known oat pathologist who is also president of APS when he was active and I worked for him during this one summer. The next summer I transferred to Boyce Thompson Institute in Yonkers, New York, where George McNew was the director. George had previously been head of the botany department at Iowa State but he was director of Boyce Thompson Institute. And he too was a former president of APS. And I worked at Boyce Thompson for two summers one for Lawrence Miller. And the second summer, I worked in the area of rust diseases. So those kinds of got me started in plant pathology. Then, when I graduated in 1960, I went out to tour various graduate schools to see which one is the best fit for me. So I went to UC Berkeley during the Christmas vacation and visited with a couple of people there. The next day, I went up to UC Davis and had a nice visit with the faculty there and made the decision that I thought that Davis was probably a little more tuned in to my kinds of interests than then was Berkeley. So I went home. And during that time, I was awarded NSF Graduate Fellowship, which meant that I could go anyplace I wanted to with all of my tuition and fees covered so graduated in 1960, and went out to UC Davis, then the fall of 1960, and basically took classes during that time. Over the next two years, my fellowship ran out, and George McNew contacted me and he says, "You know, we have a research station at Grass Valley, California, that are working on Pine and insect relationships. We need somebody to work on the effects of the blue stain fungus that goes along with the pine bark beetle. Would I be interested in doing that as a research thesis? And if so, the Boyce Thompson Institute would support my work there." So I said yes. And Bob Campbell at UC Davis decided he would be my major professor. So that's where I got my start in plant pathology. Graduated in 1964. And the department there offered me a faculty position. And but it was to work on cotton. And I had never seen a cotton plant in my life. But Lyle Leach, the head of the department said, "You've got a good general background in plant pathology, you'll do just fine." So I stayed on at UC Davis working in cotton diseases and during the next three years, had a very interesting experience to getting involved with the political side of plant pathology, if you ever think of one, and that had to do with a disease of cotton verticillium wilt. But it also had to do with a law that the California legislature had passed that suggested that made it mandatory that only one variety of cotton be planted in the San Joaquin Valley of California. And that was the valley or the variety called a kala for 42. So I got started with that. And, of course, one of the things you're looking for is disease resistant, but there was none about that time. But Steve Wilhelm at Berkeley, also get involved with that disease. And he by the time I left in 1967, to move up to Bozeman, Montana, Montana State University. Steve continued to work on verticillium wilt, and eventually got the one variety law cancelled. And that allowed for other varieties of cotton to be grown. And hopefully, since then, the verticillium wilt problem has been somewhat averted. 6:37 Jim: Don, I have to interrupt because I'm really fascinated to learn that there was this One Variety Law. Can you talk about that or what the rationale was for that? 6:50 Don: The One Variety Law was actually asked for by the grower cotton growers of California to protect the high quality of their cotton, it had a long fiber, strong fiber and was much higher quality than cotton in the southeast. And as a result, they got a premium price for it. And so, California Legislature passed this One Variety Law, which worked very well for the cotton growers for quite a long time. But eventually, when the disease verticillium wilt moved in, being able to grow a different variety led to the fact that they eventually rescinded this law. 7:27 Jim: So it was a case of maybe good business practice, but bad biology. 7:32 Don: I think that's right. 7:35 Jim: So it sounds as though UC Davis was really important in your development as a plant pathologist, first as a graduate student. And then as an early career assistant professor, could you talk a little bit about your decision making process how you ended up at UC Davis? And what advice you have for maybe undergrad students or graduate students who are looking at different grad programs right now? What should they be looking for? 8:05 Don: I think what they really need to find is a very strong faculty that's very much oriented towards agriculture, both problem solving, but also in basic research. And the faculty at Davis at the time I was there was just outstanding. Ray Grogan was one of the best professors I ever had. He knew more about all diseases of all plants of anybody I ever knew. And plus, there are a number of other professors there, I won't name but the quality of the faculty has got to be high on on their list. But they also need to find out whether the faculty is interested in working with graduate students. Not every faculty member wants to have graduate students. But I found the ones that Davis be very much interested in training and giving advice to students, and then getting out of the way and letting them work, which is what happened in my case. 8:59 Jim: Yeah, that's really great advice. And I think that certainly rings true to me as well. It strikes me though, that higher ed has really changed quite a bit since I was in grad school since we were in grad school. Can you comment a little bit on those changes in higher ed, and what you see is different today than when you first started your career? 9:22 Don: Well, one thing that comes to mind is the fact that we had to learn two foreign languages before we get our PhD. And so you had to pass an exam. I did it both in German and French. But that took a lot of time away from being learning about Plant Pathology. I don't know of any school in the country now that requires a foreign language as a requirement for a degree. So that's certainly one thing and the whole development in molecular biology and computers is certainly way different than when I was first started out. I tried my thesis on an electric typewriter, nobody would even do that today. So those are changes that have occurred that I see as being fairly major. 10:12 Jim: I'm laughing to myself right now. I just came from a PhD defense just before this conversation and in reflecting on the the size and but also the quality of that thesis, very different than what you and I might have produced when we were in grad school. So I do see those big changes. So you started your, your career as a faculty member, first at UC Davis, but you ended up at Montana State? Can you talk about that transition? 10:44 Don: I found out about or not opening at Montana State at Christmas time by 1966, I believe it was. And I talked to my wife about both of us had come out of the Midwest. And we always thought that maybe eventually we'd like to return to the Midwest. Well, Montana is certainly not the Midwest, but it's far different than California. So we decided to make the change. There was a student, co student of mine, Gary Strobel, who had gone to UC Davis and had come to Bozeman about three years earlier. And I told him, if a job ever opens up in Bozeman, let me know I might like to take a look at it. And so I got a phone call from the department head came up to interview and made the decision. Yes, we're moving to Bozeman, and we got here July 1 of 1967. And my wife and the family here are so glad that I made that change. And I am too. 11:40 Jim: That's really wonderful. And you certainly had a very productive career with Montana State. Much of your research focused on soil borne diseases, a small green crops, and I think you worked a little bit in bio control as well. 11:56 Don: That's right. Most of my time was spent on you know, fungal diseases like ergot in small grains, dwarf abundant small grains. And then towards the end of my career, I got involved in some buyer control work that led me to cooperate with Jim cook over at Washington State University, which was a very productive relationship. 12:16 Jim: It's really fantastic. And you also, while at Montana State taught undergrad courses as as well as graduate courses. And if I'm not mistaken, you receive multiple teaching awards. 12:30 Done: Well, I didn't know about multiple awards, but I did teach quite a few classes. I really enjoyed teaching the introductory plant pathology and introductory mycology, because these were classes that students had never had any exposure to. And so it was something that was new to them, they were repeating, you know, introductory biology, or whatever. And so it was fun to relate my personal experiences that I had in dealing with plant pathology, and it made a lot of fun. And then, towards about mid career, I also started offering some graduate classes, particularly one in soil borne diseases. And that allowed me to really get involved with some of the very deep and good work that had gone on and soil borne diseases from all over the world. So I enjoy teaching that graduate class as well. 13:20 Jim: It's wonderful. And teaching is one of the joys I think of being a faculty member. For many of us, and I think it really underscores the importance of passion for field and you talked a little bit about how mentors shaped your career. And I'm also hearing you articulate that as an instructor. You were really passionate about what you were teaching, and pass it on to students. Is there anything you want to comment about mentorship and the importance of mentors? 13:55 Don: Well, I think that's true. I didn't have a lot of graduate students that worked under me and over my career, probably, maybe a dozen or so. But I really enjoyed having students learn about the real world of agriculture and the real world of plant pathology and how it interacts with agriculture. And it also got involved with some of the really critical things. Probably the most interesting one I got involved with was dwarf bunt of wheat. This got involved in interaction with a Chinese. The Chinese like to buy our wheat up until about 1971 or two. And then all of a sudden, they stopped buying our wheat because they said it had TCK smut. Well, nobody in the United States knew what TCK smut was. Hadn't heard that acronym before, but we finally determined that they met it was tilletia covntroversa Kuhn, which is dwarf bunt of wheat. And myself and several others, Jim Hoffman, particularly at the USDA, got involved with negotiations with the Chinese over the next 25 years, to convince them that this was not a pathogen, like late blight of potatoes that was going to wipe out their wheat crop. That was one thing they kept tossing at us all the time because we don't want a pathogen that's going to destroy our wheat crop. Well, we even had one of their Chinese scientists come over here and spend two years working with us. Mr. Zhang Jiang was his name. And he, he lived in Bozeman here for a while, mostly spent his time at Corvallis, Oregon. But we had him put dwarf bunch spores on wheat and planted out in a variety of areas around Montana and the Pacific Northwest, to determine what factors affect the weather had on horseback. Well, probably many of you don't realize the dwarf bunt is the disease strictly of winter wheat, the spores have to have a long period of around freezing temperatures, 32 degrees fahrenheit for about six weeks for infection to occur. Well, that only occurs under long periods of snow cover, which occurs in isolated valleys of Montana, Idaho, Washington, maybe even Colorado, I'm not sure about that. But he found that you could put a lot of spores on the wheat seed. And if they didn't have that proper climate, they did not infect the grain. But it took a long time for the Chinese finally, to realize that maybe they could tolerate some spores on there, we get away from what they call the zero tolerance. And zero tolerance on anything is really hard to meet. But by 1999, I believe it was, they finally established the fact that they could tolerate a minimum quantity of spores. And this reopened the trade between the Pacific Northwest and China, for wheat. And to this day, the interesting they are still buying our wheat. But that was an interesting time and a period to see how plant pathology interacts with international agriculture. 17:12 Jim: And it comes right back to the disease triangle. 17:16 Don: Absolutely. All three things are required. 17:19 Jim: Great, it does sound as though throughout your career, you've had many experiences in politics meets plant pathology, if you want to call it that, but particularly in the international trade. 17:35 Don: That was certainly the most interesting one that I had, I got involved in a few other legal things, one of which I used in teaching in plant pathology, and then eventually wrote a lesson that APS has on their education site called Naughty Peat, peat spelled P-E-A-T. And it had to do with contamination of peat by a pathogen and whether it would affect the growth of trees for forestry. 18:05 Jim: We'll provide a link to that on the Plantopia webpage. 18:09 Don: Okay, great. That eventually went to a lawsuit that I had to testify and then had to do with whether the producer had actually monitored whether there were any pathogen in there, peat or not. But it certainly wiped out a quarter of Romaine seedlings in one greenhouse in northern Montana. And before we figured out what was going on, it turns out it was a pathogen, a combination of pythium and G's area, and that was causing the problem. 18:41 Jim: Great. Plant pathology really is a field that can take you in many, many different directions. And 18:49 Don: That's one of the things that of advice to students have been stay flexible. You never know exactly where a new thing is going to pop up, or they're going to take you in a new direction. I never had any idea I would work on dwarf bunt. But when that Chinese situation provided an opportunity to get involved in in the new area of plant pathology. So stay flexible and be willing to work on a lot of different things in a lot of different ways to implant pathology is never boring because of that. It certainly has been to me. 19:26 Jim: I'd like to talk now about APS, the American Phytopathological Society, and your your roles and APS and what it meant to you throughout your career. 19:39 Don: Well, my very first interaction was to become Secretary of the Pacific Division of APS. And that allowed me to get involved with that action and eventually that led to me being president of the of the Pacific Division and went to the Pacific Division meetings and a lot of good fellow faculty members that way and interact Because students and one thing led to the other eventually became a counselor from the Pacific Division. So that put me on the APS General Board. And that started about 1979 1980n there abouts. And for the next 11 years, I was on APS Council in the, as either a counselor or as President-Elect, and so forth. So it was a wonderful 11-year period that I saw lots of changes happened during that period of time. 20:34 Jim: Well, on behalf of the entire APS membership, let me say thank you so much for your your leadership and service in APS. APS is a volunteer-driven organization. And your work really means a lot. 20:48 Jim: Well, it was a fun time a one of the things that I do remember, when we were at the old building, now, I assume that building doesn't exist anymore. But we would have our board meetings once a year and my first time there, the room was so smoke-filled, you could already see from one end to the other because that was when smoking was still a very popular thing with a number of the members on the board of APS course that changed over the years. The other major issue that came up that I remember was many plant pathologists were publishing their work in a publication called Plant Disease Reporter, which was put out by the USDA, and about 1979 1980, there abouts. They decided not to publish that journal anymore. So the council had to make a determination, were they going to take over that journal? If so, what would it be named? What would be its focus? And how could we afford to do it? And boy, there were back and forth negotiations and discussions on that. And of course, if most of you realize from that, came our journal Plant Disease, which was one of the best decisions that APS Council ever made was to take on that particular journal, but it wasn't without some concern about whether we could afford to do that. But it certainly worked out. Well, it's, I guess, one of our most popular journals today, and deservedly so. 22:20 Jim: It does remain a very important journal for the society as well as for the discipline. Of course, APS is actually one of the maybe a handful of scientific societies that still manages their own publications. So APS publications have grown considerably since the start of plant disease. But it remains really a very important part of of our society. 22:46 Don: That's right. 22:48 Jim: Are there other changes that have happened to APS over those years that that you want to highlight? 22:53 Don: Well, you know, I have been retired and out of the area for so long now. I think that the Council must function quite a bit differently than we used to do at that time. One of the things that was really striking to me, the year that I was president, was course before email and that sort of thing. So we did all of our business by phone. And being president, I was on the phone to headquarters or to other people, you know, four or five times a day. But that's just the way we did business. So after the meeting, in which I gave up the presidency to the next president, I went home, and the phone didn't ring. It just a lonely typing that, okay, you're out of it. Now, the phone doesn't need to ring anymore. So that's one, one big change. Now, I'm assuming as all of this communication is done pretty much electronically. 23:51 Jim: And certainly the pandemic that we're, we're still living through is really changed the functionality of APS leadership, as many other facets of life, so a lot of of council business now is done remotely. And you know, of course, there there are significant financial savings, as well as environmental impacts that are our drivers there as well. So APS continues to evolve. I think it's the take home message there. I'd love your perspective, though. Why should a young professional in plant pathology or perhaps a student studying plant pathology, why should they get involved in APs? 24:37 Don: The biggest thing I could say is that you need to go to the annual meeting. And this is to establish the relationships not only with other graduate students, but with other young faculty, people that you know, enthusiasm breeds on itself. And so it's one way to, to get involved with other faculty members who are as enthusiastic about that. yield as you are, it's also a good way to find out about new products, new varieties, new techniques. I went to every phytopath meeting, I think that I could. I don't know that I missed more than one maybe in my career. And I just found that so. And of course, the other big thing is the journals that allow you to publish results of your research. And so I use both phytopathology and plant diseases, major outlets for the research that I did. 25:29 Jim: That's great. And thank you for the plug for the annual meeting. The APS annual meetings now called Plant Health, and we'll take place this August in Pittsburgh. This actually is our first in-person meeting, since pre pandemic, so it really will be a wonderful opportunity for scientists to to get together and get to know each other. So you've also been very involved in APS Foundation. And the foundation is the philanthropic arm of APS, so it raises funds on behalf of APS programming. Could you talk a little bit about your role with APS Foundation? 26:13 Don: Well, I don't remember exactly what year I started with the foundation. But I think I served on the board for all these six years, three years as chairman. And back when we first started, the student travel awards are one of the major activities of the board and I was helped raise funds so that we would have a booth at the annual meeting where people could come up and make a pledge or a donation. And the longer I got involved with the foundation, I realized there's some other ways that that my wife and I can help. And one of those was to establish the Mathre Education Fund, I think still exists to this day. So we were more than pleased to be able to do that. And I would encourage anybody in plant pathology to if you get a chance to be on the foundation board do so because it's a very positive function of the society. 27:11 Jim: Excellent. Thank you so much. Anything else you want to share about APS, about plant pathology, advice for our early career professionals? 27:22 Don: I think we've covered about everything. As I told you earlier, the flexibility is my word to the students of if you're going to have a good career, be flexible. Look at lots of different things. You'll find enjoyment on a lot of them. 27:40 Jim: That's excellent advice and a great way to end this conversation. Don, thank you so much for for meeting with us today and for sharing your insights. 27:50 Don: It has been a pleasure. 27:51 Jim: Great. So we just heard from Don Mathre, Professor Emeritus from Montana State University and former APS president. I'm Jim Bradeen, the host of the Plantopia podcast. Plantopia is a production of the American Phytopathological Society. Thank you so much for joining today, and we look forward to next time.