CRC plant pathologist Dr. Don Harder has been a member of the Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, Cereal Research Centre rust research team since 1973. He retires on June 30, 1999 after a 30-year career in rust research. Don's professional career began in 1968 when he graduated from Washington State University with a Ph.D. in plant pathology. A post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Manitoba led to a posting at the National Plant Breeding Station at Njoro, Kenya, under a joint University of Manitoba/CIDA program. It was there that Don gained considerable knowledge of rust epidemiology.

Don first joined the Agriculture Canada Winnipeg Research Station (now the CRC) with responsibility for oat crown rust. In addition to the surveys for crown rust occurrence and virulence analysis, he extensively screened exotic wild oat collections for crown rust resistance, analyzing promising wild oat lines and isolating resistance genes. He also conducted ground breaking electron microscopy research to determine the basis of cereal resistance to rust. After a year's transfer of work to the University of Konstanz, Germany in 1981, Don switched his responsibility from oat crown to oat stem rust. Staff cuts in the late '80s meant that he was also charged with responsibility for stem rusts in wheat and barley.

Throughout his career, Dr. Harder has had considerable management responsibility serving as Cereal Diseases Section Head; Assistant Director; and for 18 months in 1990-91, as Acting Director. He remains active in various committees including the PRRCG Disease Evaluation Team for Oat and Barley; and the PRRCG Evaluation Team for Wheat, Rye and Triticale. He was President of the Canadian Phytopathological Society in 1996/97, and has served as associate editor of the Canadian Journal of Plant Pathology and the Canadian Journal of Botany. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Manitoba.

During the last 10 years of his career Dr Harder focused his research energy on studies of the he QCC stem rust problem in barley, which had the potential to seriously impact on barley production and producer returns in the eastern Canadian prairies and the Northern Great Plains states. With collaborating colleagues, post-doctoral fellows, and a graduate student, he was successful in identifying and characterizing new sources of resistance, elucidating the components of this resistance, developing molecular markers for resistance genes, assisting breeding programs to incorporate the resistance into adapted cultivars, and determining the levels of yield loss in cultivars varying in resistance to QCC. This successful research will ensure protection of the crop from stem rust and its viability in the region, for many years to come.