Mississippi Turfgrass – Julie Holt, Content Director, TheTurfZone.com
The Turf Zone: Welcome to The Turf Zone. In this episode of Mississippi Turfgrass, we’re speaking Dr. Maria Tomaso-Peterson, Research Professor in Plant Pathology at Mississippi State University. Maria, thank you so much for taking time to talk to us today.
Maria Tomaso-Peterson: Thank you, it’s a pleasure to be with you this morning.
TTZ: Let’s start in your early years and get a little background about your career path and your education. So where did you start on your path to becoming a plant pathologist?
MTP: Well, I started in ornamental horticulture and I got my B.S. degree in that and in that curriculum, I was very interested in plant propagation, and this was back in the early 80s, so a long time ago and I was very interested in tissue culture, which was state-of-the-art back in that time. I was interested in pursuing a Master’s degree in tissue culture, and at Mississippi State, the only person that was working in tissue culture was Dr. Jeff Kranz in turf. I’d had his class, turfgrass management, my last year and I really enjoyed that and the students I met in there. I met my lifetime friend, Melody Fraser, who’s at PureSeed testing now. I started with his program doing tissue culture in turfgrass and my project was to select disease resistance for creeping bentgrass germplasm. I kinda was like, “Oh, good grief, fungi.” I hated plant pathology class, I thought “What am I going to do?” But I settled in and I was working with rhizoctonia solani, which I learned to love working with that organism. After my Master’s, I became a research assistant under Dr. Kranz and I continued my Masters work, which was the in vitro cell selection for brown patch resistant germplasm for creeping bentgrass. Then I attended an international turf research conference, it was in the U.S. that year, down in Palm Beach, and I knew I wanted to move on in my education, so while I was down there, I attended a lot of talks. I listened to a talk by Dr. Monica Elliott, she was describing bermudagrass decline for the first time to an audience, and I was just taken aback and just was like this is what I want to do. So I started on that career path while working as a research assistant on my Ph.D., so it took me a long time to get my Ph.D., but I think it’s kind of interesting that I’m ending my career working with ectotrophic root infecting fungi that cause bermudagrass decline or take-all root rot. It’s just kind of interesting the paths that life lends to you, the doors that open. It’s beena while, but it seems like it was just yesterday, and it’s just been great. So that’s how I got here.
TTZ: I always like to hear who shepherded folks along their path and their career, and you mentioned Dr. Krans. Who else helped you determine your route?
MTP: Well, once I determined I wanted to go into plant pathology, I had a turfgrass management student working for me at the time, Gary McCullough, who was kind of instrumental in some of the paths I took, a very dear lifelong friend, and he told me, “You need to teach turfgrass diseases to our student.” And I was like, “Oh, I can probably do that.” So after
seven years of working with Dr. Krans, I had an opportunity to become the research assistant for Dr. Larry Trevathan, who was in plant pathology, and he was working with weed in turfgrass, so he was in turfgrass trials and I talked with Dr. Krans and decided if I was going to do plant pathology, that was where I needed to be. But at that time, I told both of them that my objective in changing, in doing this was to develop an emphasis in turf pathology at Mississippi State for turfgrass management students. Now it’s Golf and Turfgrass Management, Golf and sports. So I was able to do that and they gave me the freedom to go and Dr. Trevathan and I worked with Dr. Krans in their golf course operations lab.