2000 Nusbaum Scholar

Dr. Ana Maria Romero

The Department of Plant Pathology is pleased to award Dr. Ana Romero with the Nusbaum Scholar Award for 2000.

Dr. Romero is a native of Argentina and earned her bachelor's degree in agronomy from Universidaad Nacional de Buenos Aires in 1986. She became a teaching assistant in Plant Pathology at the Universidad Nacional de Lujan, Lujan, Argentina in 1986 and became a lecturer there in 1989. She began her graduate program in the Department of Plant Pathology at N.C. State University in 1995 under the direction of Dr. David F. Ritchie. Her graduate research focused on the evolutionary responses of the bacterial spot pathogen, Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. vesicatoria of pepper to heritable and systemic acquired disease resistance. Dr. Romero was inducted into Phi Kappa Phi in 1997 and received the Dow AgroSciences Student Award Certificate for Outstanding Research in 1998. She completed her Ph.D. program in April 2000 with a dissertation titled: "Genetic Diversity in Pepper Bacterial Spot Pathogen Strains in Eastern United States and the Effect of Induced Resistance on Dynamics of Disease and Pathogen Race Stability". Her advisory committee members were Drs. Margaret E. Daub, Peter B. Lindgren, and Rebeca C. Rufty.

Dr. Romero is described by her advisor as having the capacity to quickly grasp an idea and think about it in a probing manner. She maintained a 4.0 average during her degree program and was elected to Phi Kappa Phi in 1997. Ana's research dealt with the bacterial spot pathogen X. vesicatoria and pepper interaction. She studied the population structure of the pathogen and evolution of avirulence. She then went on to describe a mechanism by which this bacterial pathogen defeats genotype-specific host resistance via temperature sensitivity of the resistance gene-avirulence gene interaction. Since this resistance gene has been cloned and has been proposed to be used in a range of plants susceptible to Xanthomonas spp for durable resistance, Dr Romero's results call into question the validity of this approach for durable resistance. Her work also included an applied project to study the systemic acquired resistance compound ActiGuard for disease management in the field and its impact on the development of race changes in the field.

Dr. Romero is currently a lecturer of Plant Pathology in the Faculty of Agronomy at the Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires, where she teaches and conducts research.