Ivan William Buddenhagen

Ivan William Buddenhagen was born in Ventura, California in 1930 to Harold J. and Pearl M. Buddenhagen. He died at his Davis, CA home on July 9, 2022. Ivan is survived by his wife, Evelyn; daughters Becky and her son Christopher (Alina Jimenez) and their children Aaron and Graciana; Sarah and her children Russell and Felicia; Leilani (Luke Sires) and their sons Ronan and Soren; Jennifer (Kevin Wiesmann) and their children Alika, Kaiya, and Mikah; and son Evan. His oldest son William preceded him in death in 2015.

Ivan’s 60-year career began with his education at Oregon State University where he received a B.S. in Botany, an M.S. in Plant Pathology, and a Ph.D. in Plant Pathology, Plant Breeding and Genetics in 1957. As a plant pathologist, he specialized on the biology of plant diseases induced by bacteria, fungi, and viruses as affecting several crop species, including banana, papaya, plantains, maize, rice, and food legumes, which are essential food crops in developing countries.

After finishing his Ph.D, he was employed by the United Fruit Company in Costa Rica and Honduras. In Honduras he discovered the bacterial origin and biology of the Moka bacterial wilt disease of banana.

He moved to the University of Hawaii (UH) in 1964 where he was a Professor in the Department of Plant Pathology and Department Chairman from 1966-70. While on sabbatical leave from UH in 1971 at the East Pakistan Rice Research Institute, Dacca, the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 broke out and resulted in his departure from Dacca. He joined the International Rice Research Institute at Los Banos, Philippines for several months and later coordinated research on rice diseases for the All-India Coordinated Rice Improvement Project in Hyderabad, India.

After a brief return to UH, he joined the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan, Nigeria as Director of its Cereal Improvement Program on maize and rice (1975-1980). Of particular interest was breeding for tolerance to Maize Streak Virus (MSV), a major disease of maize. He demonstrated the importance of creating uniform infection pressure and then appraising rates of disease development. Rearing virus-infected vector leafhoppers and applying uniform disease exposure to maize genotypes enabled the control required to avoid selecting “escape plants” and instead promote the selection of progenies with broad resistance against the virus. The program produced varieties and hybrids now grown widely in Africa. In 1986, IITA received the King Baudouin International Agricultural Research Award for its research and development of resistant varieties, especially for its success in combating MSV. Ivan applied similar scientific approaches for the selection of rice with high field tolerance to rice blast disease. His creativity and application of controlled disease pressure for durable disease resistance made Ivan a hero to many younger plant breeders of both national and international research communities. Ivan avoided dependence on simply inherited disease resistance, knowing that this type of disease resistance would break down in just a few years.

After six years at IITA, Ivan rejoined academia on the faculty at the Department of Agronomy and Range Science (later merged into the Department of Plant Sciences) in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at the University of California, Davis. He was one of four professors in the College appointed to emphasize international agricultural development research and teaching. He was invited to lead the food legume program which resulted in improved disease resistances in chickpea, cowpea, and common and lima beans. He led the discovery of a virus disease in California-grown chickpea. He also found that Ascochyta spores were distributed in California during cleaning of imported chickpea seed, thus introducing Ascochyta blight to California agriculture. At UCD he developed and taught a graduate course in International Agricultural Development and mentored students toward careers in international agriculture. Ivan produced several seminal papers on concepts and strategies for improving food production through breeding and adoption of sound plant pathological principles. As a ‘global plant pathologist’, he transmitted his views on agricultural development in many countries during his numerous consultancies. Ivan was a valuable mentor and knowledge resource in applied plant breeding, globally.

After retirement from UCD in 1994, he dedicated his efforts to the pathogenesis and integrated control of major diseases threatening bananas in Indonesia with funding from the Nunhems Foundation. He was particularly concerned about the devastating bacterial Blood Disease of cooking bananas. Dutch scientists had reported its discovery in Sulawesi in 1905 and its spread by insects through the male flower bud. He found bud-less mutants that were made widely available to small-holder farmers of Indonesia.

One of his latest concerns was conservation of wild banana species. These tropical forest species depend on seed production facilitated by pollination by bats. With forest destruction, bat populations decline and the banana wild relative species decline, thus reducing biodiversity for genetic improvement of banana for agriculture. Hence, conservation of wild banana starts with conservation of tropical forests.

At his family farm in Oregon, he turned his attention to reducing virus impacts on garlic production and quality. Viruses were transmitted from one crop to the next by clonal propagation. With manual pollination and the application of embryo rescue techniques, he obtained seed to produce virus-free garlic plants. He produced and distributed true seed of about thirty garlic varieties to garlic breeders in several countries.

Ivan impacted science in international agriculture as well as the lives and careers of many young scientists. He was also deeply interested in the history and cultures of many countries in which he worked. He was an avid gardener, farmer, traveler, sailor, photographer, hiker, camper, and plant lover.

To learn more about Ivan’s professional stature and impact, including some of his own narrative, the following websites may be accessed:

Read about seed propagation of garlic: https://bi-o.no/en/product/garlic-buddenhagen-experiment/

View a video on the threat of Panama disease: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR9xuAN3dQI

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