This fund was established by the students, colleagues and friends of Dr. Mannon Gallegly, in profound gratitude for his many years of service to his profession, his career successes, and his friendship and mentoring of generations of plant pathologists. In accordance with the lifelong interests and accomplishments of Dr. Gallegly, preference will be given to applicants demonstrating excellence in research and outreach related diseases of agronomic crops, especially on solanaceous hosts, including breeding for resistance, and diseases caused by Oomycetes.
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Photo credit: West Virginia University
Dr. Mannon Elihu Gallegly Jr. was born April 11, 1923 in Mineral Springs, AR, a small agricultural community in Howard County where his family farmed and picked cotton. Dr. Gallegly received his B.S.A. from The University of Arkansas in 1945 and M.S. and Ph.D. in 1946 and 1949 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During his first year of graduate school, Mannon was drafted into the Army and sent to Fort Detrick, where he worked as a Plant Pathologist in the U.S Army Biological Warfare Lab. After the war, he returned to complete his Ph.D. under J.C. Walker on bacterial diseases of tomato. In 1949, Dr. Gallegly began working at West Virginia University where he is currently an Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology with ~75 years of service. His earliest research on bacterial wilt was published in Phytopathology in 1948 and 1949. Over the last 70+ years, he’s continued to publish his work regularly in Phytopathology and other APS journals. He was recipient of the AAAS-Campbell Award for Vegetable Research in 1960. In 1971, he was elected an APS Fellow based largely on his pioneering work on the genetics, sexuality, and pathogenic races of P. infestans including the discovery of the A2 mating type and the sexual state of Phytophthora infestans in Toluca Valley in Mexico. In 2008, he co-authored the APS Press manual “Phytophthora: Identifying Species by Morphology and DNA Fingerprints,” which at the time represented almost 60 years of morphological studies of Phytophthora spp. It has sold almost 1000 copies since it was published. Dr. Gallegly has dedicated more than 70 years WVU to developing late blight resistant tomato varieties for home gardeners in West Virginia and regionally. His first tomato, the West Virginia ’63, was originally released in 1963 as part the State of West Virginia’s Centennial Celebration. In 2017, some 54 years after releasing the West Virginia ’63, he released two tomato varieties not only resistant to late blight, but also tolerant to Septoria leaf blight, a destructive fungal disease of tomato. Gallegly recently donated tomato seeds of these two varieties to the World Vegetable Center, a global nonprofit institute for vegetable research and development. In 2024, Dr. Gallegly unveiled his newest variety “Mannon’s Majesty,” which has resistance to late blight and Septoria leaf blight as well as Fusarium and Verticillium wilt.
