Wade H. Elmer grew up in Richmond, Virginia. He received his BS degree in horticulture/plant protection in 1978 and his MS degree in plant pathology in 1981 at Virginia Tech. In 1985, Elmer received his PhD in plant pathology at Michigan State University and continued there on a post-doctoral appointment. In 1987, he joined the Department of Plant Pathology and Ecology at The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES) in New Haven. He was appointed associate scientist in 1992, scientist in 2003, and chief scientist and head in 2015.
Elmer's responsibilities at CAES centered on disease management in vegetable crops, and although his research contributions addressed a wide spectrum of pathogens, he is best known as an authority on disease management of vegetables and ornamentals caused by species of Fusarium. Early in his career, he resolved the Fusarium species complex causing Fusarium crown and root rot of asparagus. He showed that a single mating population of F. proliferatum (syn. Gibberella fujikuroi) and diverse strains of F. oxysporum within the forma specialis asparagi were the dominant pathogens in the United States. A high level of vegetative incompatibility was found among a global collection of F. oxysporum f. sp. asparagi. As later supported by molecular and pathogenicity assays, Elmer found that pathogenicity to asparagus was a common trait among diverse strains of F. oxysporum, and this finding helped to explain why relocating the crop to new production fields failed to suppress this disease.
Elmer recognized that ineffective management strategies for soilborne diseases were a major cause for the disappearance of many crops in New England. In addition, the loss of methyl bromide further challenged disease management tactics. Subsequently, Elmer advanced the study of mineral nutrition as a first line of defense against plant diseases. He recognized that the practice of fertilization was well established but prescribed that fertilization for disease control was underutilized because of a lack of information. He pioneered our understanding of chloride nutrition in asparagus by deciphering the effects on micronutrient uptake, root exudation, and the resulting microbiome on plant health. The application of sodium chloride as an agricultural practice has now been adopted by asparagus growers in the United States, England, Germany, and the Netherlands. Early experiments with chloride sparked Elmer's interest in developing ways to enhance disease management by optimizing the function and availability of micronutrients using fertilization regimes, biocontrol agents, cover crops, earthworms, and/or biochar. He also employed prescribed nitrogen fertilization to enhance micronutrient uptake and suppress root diseases in beets, eggplants, ornamentals, and strawberries.
In 2005, Elmer's interest in disease management took a new direction when a dieback of the salt marsh plant Spartina alterniflora was observed along Atlantic Coast salt marshes. After he and his colleagues characterized an undescribed pathogenic species of Fusarium (F. palustre) that was associated with S. alterniflora plants from salt marshes from Nova Scotia to Louisiana, he observed that the plant physiology was altered in S. alterniflora-infected plants, resulting in increased susceptibility to herbivory by the purple marsh crab (Sesarma reticulatum). Elmer was invited in 2012 to investigate the dieback of native Phragmites australis in salt marshes in Shanghai, China, where S. alterniflora had invaded. He and his colleagues discovered that F. palustre had “hitchhiked" to China on S. alterniflora and subsequently caused a “spillover effect" on P. australis, for which it was also pathogenic.
During the last 6 years, Elmer has pioneered the use of nanoparticles of metalloid and metal oxides of micronutrients to suppress disease in economic crops. He helped organize The Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology at CAES, which is now part of a larger consortium of universities and laboratories funded by the National Science Foundation. He has worked to advance the use of nanofertilizers to impact root diseases of eggplants, soybeans, tomatoes, and watermelons and demonstrated specific root defense mechanisms that were being upregulated in response to nanofertilizers.
As an active member of The American Phytopathological Society (APS) for 40 years, Elmer has contributed to the society in many leadership capacities, including as a senior editor of Phytopathology from 2012 to 2015 and an associate editor of Plant Disease from 1992 to 1995. He also served as one of the first APS divisional forum representatives for the Northeastern Division from 2009 to 2012 and assumed a leading role in developing the divisional engagement plan under the new governance structure. In 2012, he co-organized the standing APS symposium that showcases winners of the graduate student awards. He also co-organized the APS symposia “Disease Suppression in Sustainable Agriculture in Relation to Mineral Nutrition" in 1995 and “Emerging Nano-Materials for Disease Management and Pathogen Diagnostics" in 2016. Elmer has served on the following APS committees: Membership Ad Hoc, Widely Prevalent Fungi, New Fungicide and Nematicide Data, Biological Control, Ornamental Diseases, and Soil Microbiology and Root Disease. He also has been very active in the Northeastern Division, serving as president, vice president, and secretary and also chairing the Local Arrangements, Site Selection, Graduate Student Awards, Extension, and Symposium Committees. The APS PRESS book that he co-edited, Mineral Nutrition and Plant Disease, received a Choice Outstanding Academic Title award and has been an APS best-seller for 12 consecutive years, generating more than $430,000 in gross sales for the society.
Elmer also has been very active outside APS. He recently co-edited the two-volume Handbook of Florists' Crops Diseases published by Springer and has served as an associate editor for Crop Protection since 2009. In Connecticut, he served on the governor's advisory council to enhance vocational agriculture education in the state's high schools. Although Elmer has no formal teaching responsibilities, he has mentored numerous high school interns and undergraduates and served on 11 graduate student committees at a number of universities, including the Universities of Connecticut, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Texas, and Lavras, Brazil.
Elmer has published highly relevant articles in excellent journals on Fusarium diseases and on the role of nutrition in plant disease. He is regarded by the international community as an expert in both of these areas and has presented lectures and seminars in more than 10 countries. All of these accomplishments, coupled with his extensive service to APS, make him highly worthy of recognition as an APS Fellow.
