Dr. James R. Steadman
Treasurer IAPPS
Professor & Head
Plant Pathology Department
University of Nebraska - East Campus
Lincoln, NE 68583-0722
jsteadman1@unl.edu

Curriculum Vitae

Expertise: Teaching Principles of Plant Pathology, and Laboratory in Plant Pathology. Research in disease management, diseases of common bean, pathogen population dynamics, resistance deployment strategies for bean and soybean, and co-adaptation of rust and web blight pathogens on wild/landrace beans.

Education: B. A., Biology, Hiram College, Hiram, OH, 1964. M. Sci., Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 1968. Ph. D., Plant Pathology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 1970.

International Work Experience: Latin America, Caribbean, East and Southern Africa, and New Zealand/Australia.

Experience Summary: Dr. Steadman's international career began when he was invited to present a lecture on the influence of plant architecture on diseases and consult with the bean program scientists at Centro International de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) in 1978. From this interaction with CIAT scientists, the need for, and opportunities to do research in the developing countries of the Americas became apparent. In 1979 an exploratory trip to the Dominican Republic was made to assess possibilities of establishing a USAID Collaborative Research Project there. Dr. Steadman was one of the initial group of bean scientists to work in what has become the Bean/Cowpea Collaborative Research Support Program (CRSP, a unique component of the predominantly development-oriented USAID Agriculture Mission). The initial thrust of the Bean/Cowpea CRSP was in bilateral agreements with individual countries.
Dr. Steadman worked with Dr. Dermot Coyne, a plant breeder/geneticist, along with scientists at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez, who were responsible for advances in bean and other research and training in the Dominican Republic. In the initial stages of the project, the research concept was not understood either by the Dominican Republic Ministry of Agriculture or the local USAID Mission. Dr. Steadman was a member of a delegation of USAID-Washington and Caribbean officials who, in 1989, negotiated successfully with the local Mission to retain the B/C CRSP bean research effort in the Dominican Republic when macroeconomics was driving USAID officials to abandon portfolio objectives that supported local bean producers. It was through training of Dominican scientists, release of improved varieties with improved yields and development of disease management strategies that led to the Dominican Republic becoming self-sufficient in bean production in the late 1990's.
Dr. Steadman, through the Bean/Cowpea CRSP, has been contributing to Dominican Republic agriculture for over 25 years. The CRSP has trained two Ph.D. and 18 MS scientists who are now contributing to all aspects of Dominican agriculture. Dr. Steadman is the only remaining Principal Investigator from the first Bean/Cowpea CRSP five-year project of 25 years ago. He served as the Chair of the Technical Committee that has oversight of the research activities in East, West and Southern Africa and Latin America, and the Caribbean, and served as chair of the LAC Regional project.

In a similar way, Dr. Steadman had a seminal role in Sclerotinia Workshops. In 1974 he was one of four scientists who organized the first International Workshop and has served on the organizing committee or was the organizer of the 12 additional workshops that were presented over the past 30 years, most recently in England and New Zealand. He is the only member of the first organizing committee still active and has continued work with Sclerotinia forty years later. He also was a co-convener of the first Australasian Sclerotinia Workshop in Tasmania and has served as external examiner of Sclerotinia related Ph.D. theses in Canada and Sweden. Dr. Steadman presently serves as the Chair of the Sclerotinia Subject Matter committee of the International Society of Plant Pathology.
Dr. Steadman has dedicated nearly 40 years to international research training and outreach. He has had an impact on in-country research infrastructure, research impact such as disease management strategies, disease resistant germplasm and variety releases. In addition, the funding generated for this international research has had an impact on Nebraska and US agriculture. For example, the nearly $3 million in USAID funding over the past 28 years has enabled the Nebraska bean breeding and disease management programs to continue to make contributions and impacts to local and national bean improvement. Invited lectures and talks in places as distant as Argentina, Australasia, Costa Rica, Sweden, England, South Africa, Egypt and Tanzania also have brought information to many foreign scientists