Co-Authors

Anne Alvarez

Anne M. Alvarez is Professor at the University of Hawaii where she has made lasting contributions to the detection and management of bacterial diseases of tropical and subtropical plants including post harvest diseases of papaya.  Her work ranged from bacterial ecology to phylogeny and molecular genetics. She has extensive experience in diagnostics and control of bacterial plant diseases, specializing on diseases of vegetables and fruits. She provided leadership in developing new approaches for rapid and accurate detection of bacterial pathogens and helped pioneer use of rapid immunodiagnostic tests.  Strain-specific monoclonal antibodies were used to trace distinct bacterial populations in field studies and to distinguish the impact of soil–borne vs. seed-borne inoculum. With students and colleagues she used current methods to determine genetic relationships among bacterial pathogens and helped pioneer the development of loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) for sensitive DNA-based detection of several genera and species.  She now works with Dr. Mohammad Arif on molecular characterization of selected bacterial pathogens and continues to publish in the field.

Eva Poinar

Eva Hecht-Poinar was on the staff of the Department of Plant Pathology, UC Berkeley.   She played an indispensable role in this project by provided technical advice and soliciting information for the database.  She obtained permission/copyrights release forms for most of the images that were sent to APS. She also assured the accuracy of all scientific and common plant names.  Her versatilities made her a very important component to the success of the project.