Armando Bergamin Filho was born in Piracicaba, Brazil. He graduated from Escola Superior de Agricultura Luiz de Queiroz (ESALQ), University of Sao Paulo in 1971 with a B.S. degree in agronomy. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in phytopathology from the same university in 1973 and 1975, respectively. In 1974, he joined the Phytopathology Department at ESALQ as an assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in 1985, coordinated the graduate program in plant pathology (1984–1986), and has served on faculty and administrative committees. He has remained at ESALQ his entire career.
Dr. Bergamin specializes in plant disease. epidemiology He has traveled extensively to participate in courses and workshops. As a visiting professor, Dr. Bergamin worked on epidemiology of virus diseases with T. Inouye, Osaka Prefectural University, Japan; on general epidemiology with J. Kranz, Tropeninstitut of the Justus-Liebig University, Germany, and with F. Rapilly, Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique, France; and on crop damage and loss with B. Hau, University of Hannover, Germany. He is now collaborating with colleagues from several universities and research institutes to develop a sustainable disease management program for bean in tropical and subtropical regions.
Dr. Bergamin is best known for his work in epidemiology of diseases of tropical crops and the difference in strategies that tropical pathogens use to cycle infections over a broad range of environmental conditions compared to pathogens in temperate regions. He has documented that lesion expansion is a more important component of many tropical epidemics than cycling of new infections. These concepts and other unique features of tropical plant pathosystems have been developed in his new book (with L. Amorim) Doencas de Plantas Tropicais: Epidemologia e Controle Economico. He also has edited or written a number of books published in Portuguese, which are the only plant pathological texts in this language (Manual de Fitopatologia, 2 vol., 3 ed.). Sales of these volumes (over 38,000 copies) suggest they may be the most widely used plant pathology texts in the world!
Although a successful researcher, Dr. Bergamin has had even more impact as a teacher, teaching a number of classes at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and has been the advisor to 11 M.Sc. and 13 doctorate students in phytopathology from Brazil and other countries in Latin America. His laboratory is a major international center of epidemiological research, providing an excellent training facility on epidemiology of tropical plant diseases for graduate students and visitors. Dr. Bergamin is now teaching epidemiology for graduate students as a visiting professor at two Brazilian universities: Passo Fundo (Rio Grande do Sul) and Lavras (Minas Gerais).
Dr. Bergamin has participated in the organization of three phytopathology regional congresses, is a consultant to several agencies involved in tropical agriculture, and provides expertise on the epidemiology of South American leaf blight of rubber, citrus, sunflower, Phaseolus bean, sugarcane, and oil palm diseases, as well as coffee rust.
Dr. Bergamin has been a member of APS since 1975 and is a member of the Brazilian Phytopathological Society, the British Society for Plant Pathology, the Canadian Phytopathological Society, and the Plant Pathology Group of Sao Paulo. In 1984, he was awarded the Summa Phytopathologica prize for having published the best scientific paper in the journal from 1981 to 1982. His research projects have been financed by several Brazilian and foreign agencies.
