Prof. Adéle McLeod

Prof. Adéle McLeod first encountered plant pathology as an undergraduate at the University of Pretoria. She says that she started out studying microbiology because she likes growing things. “With plant pathology, I can grow microorganisms and plants and then use one to kill the other,” she jokes.

She completed her BScAgric in 1993 and her BScHons the following year. From 1995–1997, she worked in potato research at the ARC Vegetable and Ornamental Plant Institute at Roodeplaat.

“They still had a branch at Elsenburg then,” recalls McLeod. “A post became available there, so I joined them for two years. During that time, I did my MSc at Stellenbosch University on potato blight.”

Without her knowledge, her academic supervisor arranged for her to do her PhD at Cornell University in the United States. “I wouldn’t have been so brave!” says McLeod.

Although McLeod enjoyed being exposed to diverse research projects and methods in the large Cornell plant-pathology department and had an excellent supervisor in Dr Bill Fry, a world authority on potato blight, she never considered staying abroad. “Those New York winters were terrible,” she remembers. “I think my problem was that I could never embrace the snow.”

On her return to South Africa, she was briefly a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pretoria before accepting a position to study soilborne diseases in the Department of Plant Pathology at Stellenbosch University in 2004.

“When I came here, one of my first projects was on replant disease,” says McLeod. “Nineteen years later, we still don’t have a solution. Sometimes, one is discouraged because you want to feel that you’re giving growers something useful for all the research funding you spend.”

Despite the frustrations, McLeod considers teaching and research very rewarding. “The problems we struggle with are ones people have been trying to solve for years,” she reflects. “But plant pathology is fascinating — I enjoy it.”