George Zentmyer ’35

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In the five decades since George Zentmyer began a distinguished research and teaching career at University of California, Riverside, the results of his work have made the difference between success and failure in the multitude of professions linked to plant pathology. He is recognized within the world’s science community as the foremost authority on a species of deadly fungus that causes the most serious disease of avocado plantings worldwide. This fungus also causes destructive diseases on many other crop plants, forest trees, and ornamentals.

Zentmyer also studied several other diseases of the avocado and of other trees including cacao and coffee. Results from his years of laboratory and field research had immensely benefitted avocado growers as well as growers of other subtropical and tropical crops worldwide. His collections of native avocado trees and related species in Latin American in the quest for disease-resistant germplasm for rootstocks furnish another timely example of the importance of biological diversity, and the need for protecting tropical rainforests and other sources of useful plant materials.

Zentmyer has been instrumental in establishing a large collection of fungus isolates and species of unmatched genetic diversity which are distributed to scientists around the world. This germplasm will be utilized by scientists in molecular studies well into the future. Zentmyer’s research also has involved chelation as a fungistatic mechanism, chemotherapy for control of vascular diseases and chemotaxis as a mechanism of pathogenesis.

In 1964, while on a Guggenheim Fellowship, Zentmyer aided Australian pathologists in isolating and identifying the pathogen in a disastrous epidemic in dying eucalyptus forests as well as in many shrubs and herbaceous components of the native flora of Western Australia.

For over 50 years, Zentmyer’s distinguished research career has helped not only to secure the valuable avocado industry, but also to lay the foundations for scientists around the world addressing the devastating problems affecting native plants and agricultural crops caused by plant pathogenic fungi. A member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, he has received numerous awards, including a special award of honor from the California Avocado Society, the Faculty Research Lecturer and an Emeritus Faculty Award from the University of California, the Riverside and Award of Distinction, and the Fellow Award and Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Phytopathological Society.