Kenneth F. Baker Student Travel Award

Colleagues and friends have established this award in honor of Kenneth F. Baker for the contributions that he has made to the science of plant pathology through his research and service.

 Kenneth F. Baker (1908-1996) made major contributions to plant pathology over a period of more than 60 years. His many research specialties included diseases of nursery and ornamental crops, seed pathology, soilborne plant pathogens, biological control of plant pathogens, and history of plant pathology. His interests beyond plant pathology included anthropology, archeology, early civilizations, the opera, and classical music. He was a scholar with a personal library that would rival many departmental libraries. He was also an avid photographer and naturalist.

Baker developed the steam-air method for elimination of plant pathogens from soil by mild heat treatment (pasteurization) rather than sterilization. He showed that the same mild heat treatment could also eliminate pathogens from seeds and worked with his friend, the late Watt Dimock, in the development of meristem culture for production of pathogen-free planting material. His book, The UC System for Healthy Container-grown Plants (1957), set the stage for the permanent success of today's ornamentals and nursery industries. His book with W. C. Snyder, Ecology of Soil-borne Plant Pathogens-Prelude to Biological Control (1965), representing the proceedings of the first and now-classic international symposium on soilborne plant pathogens held in Berkeley, CA in 1963, remains to this day as the definitive base book on soilborne plant pathogens. His two books with R. James Cook, Biological Control of Plant Pathogens (1974) and The Nature and Practice of Biological Control of Plant Pathogens (1983), created the scientific framework in place today for this area of science and practice. 

Consistent with his intense and scholarly interest in the scientific literature, Baker helped launch and served on the first editorial committee of Annual Review of Phytopathology starting in 1962. He was Editor of this series from 1972-1979. Together with his wife of more than 40 years, Katharine, also a plant scientist, they provided an endowment "to promote the field of plant pathology through Annual Review of Phytopathology." This endowment was used to launch Annual Reviews Inc. into the electronic age with Annual Review of Phytopathology as the first on CD ROM. 

Baker grew up and completed high school in Clarkston, WA, a small town in southeastern Washington at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater rivers and adjacent to the larger Lewiston, ID. From an early age, his summers were spent in the Bitteroot Mountains, including as a mule-team packer. This experience no doubt led to his interests as a naturalist. His first exposure to plant pathology was probably his participation in the failed project of the U.S government to control the highly destructive white pine blister rust by eradication of the Ribes alternate host of the pathogen, Cronartium ribicola. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Washington State University in 1930 and 1934, respectively, and then did postdoctoral training with the famous B.M Dugger at the University of Wisconsin. Upon completion of his postdoctoral training, he took a job with the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Nebraska working on establishment of trees as shelter belts. After about one year, he took a job in Hawaii working on pineapples and spent time collecting pineapple germplasm in Brazil. He then became a faculty member at the University of California, where he spent most of his professional career, first at UCLA and then at Berkeley. He spent two sabbatical leaves in Australia, the first at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute in Adelaide, SA, and the second at the New South Wales Department of Agriculture in Rydalmere, NSW. It was during these visits that he developed a close professional relationship with the Australian nursery industry. After retirement, he moved to Corvallis, OR where he served as Courtesy Professor, Oregon State University, and Collaborator, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. In addition to many awards from the floral and nursery industries of both the United States and Australia, he was a National Research Council Fellow, Fullbright Senior Fellow, NATO Senior Fellow in Science, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Phytopathological Society.