Four potato researchers were honored for the work with potatoes, being named Honorary Life Members by the Potato Association of America (PAA).
The PAA (https://potatoassociation.org/) is comprised of researchers and technicians who study all aspects of potatoes. According to the association, “The PAA serves as the official professional society for those involved in potato research, extension, production, and utilization. The Association provides opportunities to contribute in one or more of six sections: Breeding & Genetics, Certification, Extension, Production & Management, Plant Protection, Physiology, and Utilization & Marketing.”
The four researchers honored at PAA’s annual meeting, held this summer in Missoula, MT, for their lifetime of potato research are: Russell E. Ingham, Gregory Porter, Kenneth Rykbost and Michael Thornton.
We’re highlighting two honorees—Gregory Porter and Russell Ingham—today and will highlight the other two tomorrow.
Gregory Porter
In his remarks in accepting the Honorary Life Member award, Porter talked about his journey in the potato industry from his time on his family’s farm to his research at the University of Maine as well as the impact the PAA has had on his professional life.
He said, "If you have a chance to read, you’ll see that I’ve provided quite a bit of service to the PAA over the years. But it in no way matches what I’ve gotten out of being a part of PAA.
“I grew up on a potato farm in northern Maine, a family farm that was established in the 1840s when that area was being cleared, a farm that’s still in business today. I learned a lot growing up on the family farm.
“One of my earliest memories was picking potatoes at about the age of 6 years old in the 1960s. That was before mechanization had really taken over in that area. At that time potatoes were laid out on the ground with a potato digger and then large crews of people – often families – would come through and they would pick into wooden baskets and dump those into big wooden barrels that we hauled off the field.
“Well, I’ve been in research—this is my 38th year of researching the potato crop at the University of Maine. What do I do in the spring? I plant potatoes and I pick rocks—the fields are still rocky. What do I do in the fall? We lay out research plots on the ground, bend over ‘em, pick them up by hand and put them in wooden boxes.”
He then joked, “So in many ways, I haven’t really progressed much.” He then added, “But in some ways, I have, of course.”
He then said, “My career got started because of PAA members and their ability to mentor.”
Following is the PAA bio for Gregory Porter.
Porter grew up in the small town of Washburn in northern Maine. He worked on his family’s potato, grain, and beef cattle farm prior to attending college. Those early years working on the family farm alongside his grandfather, father, and brothers instilled a strong love of potatoes, agriculture, and the outdoors.
His career plan was to attend college and then return to the family farm—however, fate intervened and plans were revised. Porter attended the University of Maine in Orono and received a B.S. degree in Soil Science in 1980. During his senior year in college, Porter met with long time PAA member and HLM Hugh Murphy and discussed potential career path changes. “Murph” suggested getting some experience conducting agricultural research and offered a graduate research assistantship. Porter accepted the assistantship, which involved conducting crop management research on potatoes. The assistantship provided broad exposure to field research in potato agronomy, weed control, and variety development.
He received his M.S. degree in Plant & Soil Sciences in 1982 from the University of Maine. Porter then did his Ph.D. research in Agronomy (Crop Physiology), studying carbohydrate translocation in maize. He received his Ph.D. from The Pennsylvania State University in 1985. The years in graduate school provided Porter a broad background in agronomy, plant physiology, statistics, and excellent opportunities to learn and develop research skills. During 1981, as a graduate student at the University of Maine, Porter attended his first PAA meeting (Charlottetown, PEI) and won an award in the graduate student paper competition. He was struck by the scenic beauty of PEI, the depth of potato research and extension represented at the PAA meeting, and by the welcoming nature of the PAA membership.
In 1985, Porter returned to the University of Maine and took a faculty position in the department of Plant & Soil Sciences. The position was 80 percent research on agronomy and crop physiology, mostly on potatoes, but it also included research on grains and other crops that could be grown in rotation with potato. The position provided the opportunity to work closely with growers to help develop rotation crop, soil and nutrient management, supplemental irrigation, and variety recommendations. Conducting field research and working with growers were two of Porter’s favorite activities as a university faculty member.
The position also involved 20 percent teaching and over the years Porter taught undergraduate classes in potato science, crop ecology and physiology, and graduate-level classes on similar topics as well as in experimental design and applied statistical analysis.
Porter has authored or co-authored many peer-reviewed and extension-type articles over the years, frequently presented research results at grower meetings, and has mentored many PhD- and MS-level graduate research projects while serving as thesis committee chair or a committee member. Porter served as the Chair of the Department of Plant, Soil, & Environmental Sciences for five years and expanded his research role in 2007 when he took over leadership of the University of Maine Potato Breeding Program.
For his entire career, Porter has participated in multi-disciplinary potato breeding and variety development research along with many valued collaborators in the eastern regional group, as well as collaborators from other programs throughout North America. He has participated in the release of many valuable potato cultivars, including Andover, Caribou Russet, Eva, Hamlin Russet, Harley Blackwell, Keuka Gold, Lamoka, Lehigh, Peter Wilcox, Pike, Pinto Gold, Waneta, and many more.
Porter has been an active participant in the Potato Association of America over the years and has rarely missed an annual meeting. He served on the PAA Executive Committee from 2002 to 2005 and was President at the 2004 PAA Meeting in Scottsbluff, NE. He served on the Finance Committee for many years and was Finance Committee Chair from 1995 to 2002. Porter served on the ad-hoc committee that helped modernize the American Journal of Potato Research (AJPR) in 1996 and he served as an Associate Editor from 1996 to 1998 and a Senior Editor from 1998 to 2002. Porter served on the LAC for the 1995 PAA Meeting in Bangor, ME, and was Co-chair with Leigh Morrow for the 2015 PAA Meeting in Portland, ME. Porter has been an active member of the Production & Management, Breeding & Genetics, and Physiology sections. He has also reviewed many manuscripts for the AJPR and other scientific journals.
Outside of the University of Maine and PAA, Porter enjoys spending time with family, gardening, hiking, fishing, and many other outdoor activities. While not a big fan of travel, he enjoys occasional vacation travel to warmer climates than provided in his home state of Maine. He has also greatly valued the travel opportunities that PAA and other scientific meetings have provided over the years.
His family’s farm in northern Maine has thrived under the leadership of Porter’s father (now deceased), older brother, and nephew. They currently raise ~1500 acres of potatoes and up to 3,000 acres of grain.
Porter resides in Bangor, ME, where his spouse, Eileen, has worked there as a dietitian for many years. They met at the University of Maine in 1980, raised two children together, and have shared many good times over the years. Eileen has enjoyed attending PAA meetings when her work schedule and family obligations allowed. Eileen’s support over the years allowed Greg to spend many days and weeks conducting potato research in northern Maine (160 miles away from their home in Bangor). They have two daughters and two grandsons. Their daughter, Erin, currently teaches in a Bangor-area elementary school and specializes in improving the reading and literacy skills of students. Their younger daughter, Katie, currently is a biomedical engineering researcher at a large Boston-area pharmaceutical company.
Honorary Life Member - Russell E. Ingham
(ED—Dr. Ingham was not able to attend this year’s PAA meeting so we don’t have any comments from him but here is his PAA bio.)
Dr. Russell E. Ingham is an emeritus professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology at Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR. He completed a bachelor’s degree in Biology at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, in 1974, a master’s degree in Zoology at Texas A&M in 1977, and a Ph.D. in Zoology and Entomology at Colorado State University in 1981.
Research Accomplishments
His dissertation research, which documented the benefits of bacterial- and fungal-feeding nematodes on nutrient cycling and plant growth, was published in Ecological Monographs and is considered one of the landmark publications in nematode ecology.
During a four-year postdoc in soil ecology at the Natural Resources Ecology Laboratory of Colorado State University, he studied the roles of root-feeding nematodes as primary consumers in mixed grass prairies and determined that nematodes consumed more plant biomass than vertebrate herbivores in that system such as bison and prairie dogs.
Dr. Ingham joined the Botany and Plant Pathology Department at Oregon State University in 1985 and has studied the biology and management of plant-pathogenic nematodes on several crops.
After several years of research on peppermint he and former graduate student, Kathy Merrifield, summarized their work in a 39-page manual on Biology and Management of Nematodes in Mint. This has been widely used by growers and is currently available as a PDF file on the internet.
Dr. Ingham and colleagues at the Hermiston Agriculture Research and Extension Center (HAREC) were the first to report damage from stubby-root nematodes (SRN) to storage and dehy onions in the Columbia Basin. Dr. Ingham worked out the relationship between nematode densities and yield reduction for different size classes of onions and determined the effectiveness and economic benefit from the use of a relatively inexpensive nematicide (Vydate oxamyl).
Dr. Ingham has spent much of his career working with various colleagues on nematode problems in potato caused by Columbia root-knot nematodes (CRKN) and SRN which vectors tobacco rattle virus to cause corky ringspot disease (CRS). He and Phil Hamm at HAREC determined that double fumigation with Telone and metam sodium would provide excellent control of tuber damage from CRKN and CRS when either product alone may not. Furthermore, they determined that if both fumigants were used in combination that control was still satisfactory if the rate of each was reduced. This practice was widely adapted and has saved potato growers millions of dollars in reduced tuber damage and reduced product cost.
Dr. Ingham, Phil Hamm and others also determined that injecting metam sodium into the soil through shanks instead of through irrigation water as was the industry standard, provided much better control of CRKN and CRS. This was an important finding since shanking in metam sodium requires less of buffer zone than when it is applied via chemigation.
Dr. Ingham and graduate student Nick David developed a protocol for timing of application of Vydate for control of tuber damage from CRKN based on nematode developmental degree-days that has been widely adopted in the Columbia Basin and Klamath Basin as well as other potato growing areas. Similarly, Dr. Ingham and student Brian Charlton worked out an effective protocol for using Vydate to control CRS.
Dr. Ingham has lead efforts that have included several of his colleagues that have documented that altering crop rotation sequences to those that include poor or non hosts to CRKN can substantially reduce the number of tubers damaged from CRKN. Central to this effort has been Dr. Ingham’s research on green manure cover crops. He determined that CRKN could be reduced substantially by growing and incorporating sudangrass, rapeseed, mustard or radish as a green manure crop before planting potato. However, work in the San Luis Valley (SLV) of Colorado and with Brian Charlton in the Klamath Basin determined that sudangrass was an excellent host for SRN and actually made CRS worse. However, varieties of radish were effective at reducing population densities of SRN and tuber damage from CRS. Potato growers in the SLV in particular have readily adopted the recommendations of Dr. Ingham for using green manure crops and have nearly eliminated the need for fumigation for nematode control as a result.
Dr. Ingham’s recent research efforts have been in collaboration with Inga Zasada, USDA-ARS on the biology of a new cyst nematode, Globodera ellingtonae, that was described in 2012 from Powell Butte, Oregon and two grower fields in Idaho.
Other efforts have supported Vidyasagar Sathuvalli’s program at HAREC on breeding resistance of potato to CRKN.
Dr. Ingham has 50 refereed journal publications, 10 book chapters, 32 extension or related publications and 59 contributions in conference proceedings. He has been an author on 83 published abstracts and has made over 100 research and extension presentations to growers. He has been an active member of the Society of Nematologists (SON) since 1979, serving on several committees including chair of Ecology, Education and Computer committees and as a member of the Executive Board (1997-1999, 2004-2011) and Editorial Board (1991-1994). He served as Treasurer from 2004-2007 and Vice President, President-elect, President, and Past President from 2007-2011. He was an executive board member of the N.A. Cobb Nematology Foundation from 2004-2007 and 2009-2011. He was Co-chair of Local Arrangements Committee for the 2010 annual PAA meeting and the Local Arrangements Chair for the SON 50th Anniversary Meeting in 2011.
Dr. Ingham also supervises the Oregon State University Nematode Testing Service which processes several hundred nematode samples for growers each year.