Gene McAvoy, County Extension Director This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  in Hendry County, Florida, sent to colleagues the news and information about his life, on which the following is based.

Dr Agrios was born in Galarinos, Haldkidikis, Greece, and received his PhD degree from Iowa State University in 1960 under the auspices of a Fulbright Travel Grant. After serving for 2 years in the Engineering Corps of the Greek Army as a demolition expert, he moved to the United States, where he assumed a faculty position at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His main duties there involved teaching several courses in plant pathology and conducting research on viruses of pepper, squash, corn, and pome fruits. In 1980, he proposed and spearheaded the creation of a biotechnology program at the University of Massachusetts and received a state wide "Award of Excellence" for his services.

In 1988, he came to Florida, and from 1990-2002 he was Chairman of the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Florida.

Dr Agrios was elected Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society in 1983 and assumed the highest administrative offices of the Society as Vice-President (1988-89), President Elect (1989-90), and President (1990-91). He also served as Secretary, Vice-President, and Chairman of both the Northeast Division of APS and the Technical Committee on Viruses and Virus-Like Diseases of Deciduous Fruit Trees and Vines.

None of his many achievements has had a greater global impact than his "Plant Pathology" which was first published in 1969 and, in 2005, appeared in its fifth edition. It is the most widely used plant pathology text in the world and has been so for more than 30 years. The original English version has been translated into 11 languages, including Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, Indonesian and Korean, thus making this encyclopaedic work readily available in the native tongues of much of the world's population.

As Editor-in-Chief of the APS Editorial Board, Dr Agrios conceived, organized, and implemented the APS Press, which continuously publishes and sells an extensive body of plant pathological literature. Today, and as a direct result of his efforts, more than 1.3 million US dollars worth of books, periodicals, and various visual aids and computer software are now being published and made available to plant pathologists and growers annually throughout the world.

The most innovative of all of Dr Agrios' accomplishments at the University of Florida was his creation of the multidisciplinary Doctor of Plant Medicine program, now headed by Dr Robert J McGovern. Formalized in August 2000, it is approved as an official professional doctoral degree program. Unlike conventional PhD programs, Doctor of Plant Medicine students are not obliged to conduct research on a narrow and clearly restricted project. Instead, these students receive extensive instruction in a broad range of topics covering the gamut of all disciplines that deal with plant health. Thus, people who have the Doctor of Plant Medicine degree will have a broader educational base to solve plant production problems. In retrospect, the concept of a "general practitioner" for plants seems only logical.

http://www.isppweb.org/nlMar10.asp#7