Welasco, Texas
April 3, 2003

Writer: Rod Santa Ana III, 956-968-5581, r-santaana@tamu.edu

Plant disease experts from throughout the world will converge on South Padre Island to attend the Pan American Plant Disease Conference at the Radisson Resort Hotel. The conference begins Saturday
and ends April 10.

Over 200 hundred scientists from as far away as Argentina, France and Spain are registered to attend the conference's many diagnostic workshops, talks, concurrent symposiums and tours of various local points of interest.

Dr. Jose Amador, center director of the Texas A&M Agricultural Research and Extension Center at Weslaco and a plant pathologist in South Texas since 1965, said plans for the conference have been two years in the making.

"As we came closer to the conference starting date, we became concerned that the war in Iraq would cause some of our participants to cancel their travel plans, but that just did not happen. We are expecting well over 200 scientists, many with their spouses, to attend this event," he said. Dr. Marvin Miller, a vegetable plant pathologist at the Weslaco center and chair of the local arrangement committee, said the conference is the first of its kind for the Western hemisphere.

"This conference is unique in that four separate phytopathological societies, which normally have meetings every two years on their own, came together for the first time to meet here at one conference," he said. The four societies are the American Phytopathological Society- Southern Division, the American Phytopathological Society-Caribbean Division, the Mexican Phytopathological Society and the Latin American Phytopathological Society.

Pre-conference workshops begin Saturday morning at the Texas A&M agricultural research center in Weslaco and conclude Sunday afternoon. Following a reception Sunday night at the Radisson, registration will begin Monday morning, followed by three days of talks, poster presentations and working lunches. An agricultural field tour on the last day of the conference will include visits to area nurseries, the sugar mill in Santa Rosa, the Texas A&M center in Weslaco and the Progresso bridge.

"It's important that plant disease experts from throughout the world share their knowledge and experience with others in their field who may one day face those same diseases in their ag production areas," Amador said. "By staying on top of these diseases and knowing how best to manage them, plant pathologists play a major role in providing society with safe, abundant and affordable food supplies that help provide stability in the world."

A member of the Latin American Association of Phytopathology for 38 years, Amador was named president of the professional society at its biennial meeting two years ago in Brazil. His first act as president was to call for the 2003 meeting to be held at South Padre Island.

A new president, Sergio Lenardon, of Argentina, will succeed Amador, at which time Amador will continue a long-standing tradition of the society of passing on an elaborate, five foot tall varayoc to the new president. "This varayoc is a large staff, or presidential gavel," Amador said, "that is similar to those used by ancient Inca chiefs who symbolically planted their varayoc wherever they traveled to alert fellow tribesmen that the chief was in town."

A smaller, one-foot replica of the varayoc will remain with Amador as a keepsake. Esther Lilia Peralta of Cuba will become the new president of the APS-Carribean division, and John Damicone of Oklahoma, will be the new president of the APS-Southern Division.

For more information on the conference, call the Texas A&M agricultural research center in Weslaco at 956968-5585, or check http://firstone.tamu.edu .