Barbara S. Valent, Kansas State University (KSU), is the 2018 winner of the APS Noel T. Keen Award. The Keen Award recognizes research excellence in molecular plant pathology. Nominees have made outstanding contributions and demonstrated sustained excellence and leadership in research that significantly advances the understanding of molecular aspects of host–pathogen interactions, plant pathogens or plant-associated microbes, or molecular biology of disease development or defense mechanisms.
Barbara S. Valent, center, receives the Noel T. Keen Award at ICPP2018
Dr. Valent received her BA degree in chemistry in 1972 and her PhD in biochemistry in 1978 from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Following post-doctoral work at Cornell University and the University of Colorado, she began her research career as a principal investigator in molecular plant pathology in 1985 at DuPont Central Research and Development in Delaware. She was promoted to the position of research leader in 1992, to research manager of the Plant and Fungal Genetics and Molecular Biology Program in 1994, and to research fellow and technical leader of the Genetic Disease Resistance Program of DuPont Agricultural Products in 1997. Dr. Valent was appointed as a professor in the Department of Plant Pathology at KSU in 2001. In 2002, she was designated a university distinguished professor, and in 2004, she was appointed chair of the Interdepartmental Genetics Program at KSU.
Dr. Valent has made outstanding and fundamental contributions in the field of plant pathology. More than 20 years ago, she recognized the need for a well-characterized and easily manipulated model system to understand how plants and fungi interact to ultimately lead to disease or resistance. She proposed and developed Magnaporthe grisea, the rice blast fungus, to serve as such a model. Because of her efforts, this pathogen is now one of the most extensively studied and important fungal models for molecular genetic and biochemical analyses of plant–fungal interactions. Using this research tool as her base, Dr. Valent has been at the forefront of several fundamental areas. She was the first to identify and clone both a blast fungal gene that controls the induction of resistance in plants (Avr gene) and the corresponding gene from rice (R gene) that is involved in recognition of the fungal gene. She was the first to demonstrate for this class of R gene that the AVR and R gene products physically interact and that this interaction likely occurs inside living plant cells. These are exciting findings with huge implications for transduction of the signals that result in plant resistance.
Dr. Valent’s many profound insights have also had important practical applications. While elucidating how fungal pathogens adhere to and penetrate host plants, which involved the genetic dissection of melanin biosynthesis in M. grisea, she and her colleagues discovered different possible targets for chemical control of fungal diseases and also a powerful fungal adhesive that even sticks to Teflon! This adhesive was later patented. Based on findings using molecular markers for analysis of M. grisea population structure over wide geographic areas, she and her collaborators have fundamentally changed the strategies plant breeders use to deploy resistance to this important disease. Molecular markers corresponding to the R gene cloned in her laboratory have also been valuable, because this gene confers resistance to the major pathotypes of the fungus in the United States. Thus, Dr. Valent’s basic research has had huge implications for practical disease control.