John Charles Walker: Pioneer in Phytopathology

Abstract

father was a cabbage grower and cabbage seedsman. The vegetable industry of southeastern Wisconsin was at that time beset with very acute disease problems. Fusarium yellows, black rot, and cabbage black leg were threaten­ ing the very existence of the cabbage industry. Erwin F. Smith had first called attention to the yellows disease in 1899, and he made his classic study of black rot in the late 1890s from a tent laboratory in Racine County. Onion smut and Botrytis storage rots were retarding the development of the set and storage onion industry. Potato production was unstable, for there was little information about diseases of potato and no disease-free seed production programs. Thus, Walker was born with an unknown heritage of plant patholo­ gy.