Fighting Pests and Plant Disease: Scientists of Crop Protection

Eleanor Anne Ormerod (1828 to 1901) opens the path as an unpaid honorary consulting entomologist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England. Her annual reports from 1877 to 1900 drew on a network of correspondents across Britain and helped define agricultural entomology as a field.

Karl Maramorosch showed that some plant pathogens multiply inside the insects that carry them as well as inside plants. His insect cell culture methods from 1956 made it possible to study such viruses in the laboratory, and he received the Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 1980.

Edward F. Knipling is credited as the inventor of the sterile insect technique, which suppresses a pest by releasing sterilized insects. He shared the 1992 World Food Prize with his colleague Raymond Bushland for it.

Raymond C. Bushland worked with Knipling at the United States Department of Agriculture to turn the sterile insect technique against the New World screwworm, a parasite that had devastated cattle herds. The screwworm was eradicated from Florida by 1958 and from the whole United States by 1982.

Carl B. Huffaker led the biological control of Klamath weed with the beetle Chrysolina quadrigemina. His 1958 mite experiment on predator and prey dynamics also became a landmark study in ecology, and he shared the 1994 Wolf Prize in Agriculture.

Wendell L. Roelofs was the first researcher to characterize the chemical structure of insect sex pheromones. His microchemical techniques led directly to synthetic attractants now used as a pest control tool in agriculture.

Theodor O. Diener, working at the USDA in Beltsville, found in 1971 that potato spindle tuber disease was caused by a short strand of RNA with no protein coat. He named the agent a viroid, and it founded a new class of subviral agents.

John E. Casida studied the toxicology and mode of action of most major insecticides, herbicides and fungicides at the University of California, Berkeley. He received the Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 1993 for his work on how insecticides act and on the design of safer pesticides.

R. James Cook, at Washington State University, found that take-all disease of wheat could be controlled by continuously planting wheat, which eventually led the soil itself to suppress the causal fungus. He received the Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 2011.

Ilan Chet of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is recognized as a pioneer of the biological control of plant pathogens. He works with environmentally friendly microorganisms rather than chemical pesticides to protect crops from the pathogens behind major losses.

John A. Pickett made the first chemical characterization of the sex pheromones and other signal chemicals of insects such as aphids, a body of work that underpins integrated pest management. He shared the 2008 Wolf Prize in Agriculture for discoveries on plant and insect chemical interactions.

Hans Rudolf Herren closes the path by leading the Africa-wide biological campaign against the cassava mealybug. The campaign averted a food crisis that could have claimed an estimated 20 million lives, and it earned him the 1995 World Food Prize.