Reflections from a retiring president – Prof. David Collinge – BSPP

When the then president, Richard Oliver, phoned me on my annual birdwatching holiday in Skagen (the prime birding spot in the Nordic region for spring migration) I didn’t hesitate – who can refuse such an honour? After five enjoyable years in the BSPP presidium, in turbulent times, I have a few reflections about our fantastic society. My take home message is “keep up the excellent work”.

My experience is of an increasingly professional organisation with three part-time employees who, after a couple of years learning the ropes, are delivering dynamic initiative and support to the elected board members. Jennie Brierley is much more than an administrator, Ros Noble develops policy and outreach and Will Kay keeps it all running both on the website and the internal communication that only the board sees – and appreciates. And of course, we have the editors of our three journals and newsletter, our most important face to the outside world. The elected board is dynamic and every year sees old faces retire and new arrive. We live in times where there is so much work pressure to achieve that soft voluntary contributions to the community are often seen as unnecessary by our lords and masters, the bean counters, and it can be difficult to persuade people to join a society, let alone to contribute to its development.

Initiatives over these years include social media, a promotional video, a small project grant fund and plant pandemic reports to add to the wealth of activities that we support already. Social media profiles have been established on LinkedIn (with over 1,500 followers), Facebook (with over 3,000 followers), Twitter with an incredible 10,000 followers (nearly) and rumour has it that there are Instagram and Mastodon profiles too, all managed by Ros Noble. These are used regularly to highlight plant pathological activities internationally, and not just to promote BSPP activities. I think this is a key to their success.

A certain virus from Wuhan (which I last visited in October 2019) has brought concepts like RNA-based vaccines and a certain understanding of mutation and natural selection to most lay folk. But has it led to an increased public acceptance of science? Perhaps, but COVID has polarised some societies. As we all know, it had a major effect on travel and led to a one-year extension of Nicola Spence’s presidency and postponement of the presidential conference “Our Plants, Our Future”, which was eventually held in Birmingham in December 2021. This was held jointly with the European Federation of Plant Pathology Societies. COVID raised its ugly head – travel restrictions meant that only two of the 150 participants travelled from abroad to attend in person, namely the president elect (from Denmark), and the editor in chief of our journal Molecular Plant Pathology, Ralph Dean (from USA). However, we did hold this as a virtual event too, with about 40 virtual participants. The system used for this was expensive and not without flaws. We therefore didn’t have full hybrid status for my presidential meeting “Microbial lifestyles: from symbionts to pathogens” held in Newcastle, but we were blessed with few restrictions and speakers from five continents.

In the year where I was 1^st-Vice president (2019) we awarded about 50 travel grants, many to early career researchers to travel to international conferences (including to researchers from abroad – our membership is roughly 30% international from 50 countries). We have crawled back up to 16 in 2022, after two very lean years. This called for new initiatives and innovative thinking to support the international experience, especially for our younger members. We are reserving funding for two events in 2022, the IS-MPMI in Providence, Rhode Island, USA in July and ICPP2023 in Lyon, France in August.

The combination of COVID and a desire to reach members around the world have created a new niche for activities for our members and not just a shift in our activities. We have held webinars: the first on biological control of plant diseases was held in September 2020 with over 300 registrants of whom about 200 participated on the day. These were spread around the globe and it gave the opportunity for many members to participate interactively in an event which they could not possibly have attended live, even without COVID lockdown as a limiting factor. Not forgetting the carbon footprint! This concept has developed into the Plant Health Club which aims at our Early Career Researchers with wide ranging subjects, many of which interest the more mature members too. Eight of these events have been held in 2022 with typically 30 participants. Subjects range from images for publication, mentoring, writing a blog and other outreach. Video recordings of these events are available through the BSPP website. We all learnt to use “Zoom” and “Teams” effectively, even for hybrid meetings.

Photograph of 5 people in a room with chairs and tables. They are standing in front of and beside a large screen on which a zoom window can be seen. 12 participants are shown on the zoom screen.

We introduced lockdown bursaries: the summer scholarship scheme by which undergraduates could spend time in a research lab took a year’s leave. Instead, students could collaborate on online projects with researchers. Some made video blogs, vlogs. We also gave emergency funding for PhD students hit by lockdown.

Another opportunity is the plant pandemic reports – so far seven, selected and edited by Eric Boa (when not busy running conferences), have been published on our home page. These cover diseases that have spread round the world with major consequences. I hope that this resource can continue into 2023 as there are many exciting diseases out there. Who knows, maybe a book will develop?

An important role of the society is in education at all levels. Luca Steel Introduced the Plant Defender Challenge badge for girl guides and brownies (scouting movement) in 2020. The first round of 1000 badges was sold out in 20 minutes. The idea continues to develop. This was one of our activities in the UN international year of plant health. Others were postponed or cancelled.

A new initiative in 2021, which grew in 2022, is the undergraduate student prizes for research project and exam performance. It is heart-warming to read the awardees’ motivation for studying plant pathological subjects. We still support undergraduate plant pathology through Summer Student Bursaries. The recipients participated in an on-line meeting where they all gave outstanding presentations, summarising their BSPP supported research projects carried out over the summer of 2022. The BSPP organised and hosted an on-line meeting for undergraduates interested in pursuing postgraduate study in plant health Virtual Event entitled “Postgraduate Study in Plant Health in the UK”.

My period in the presidium also coincided with the 40^th anniversary of BSPP – marked by 40 faces of plant pathology which showcases our diversity and also the development of a promotional video.

My own jobs as president included writing presidential blogs. Not as many as I wished to do, but I managed to cover three subjects (transgenic disease resistance, gene editing and microbial lifestyles).

It has been an enormous pleasure to make small contributions to the development of the society and to support the major new ideas described above. There are many behind them and I am not seeking credit for the work of others in and around the board! I am looking forward to being able to continue to participate in BSPP activities and to coming to the annual plant pathology meeting, next time in Birmingham in September with Rob Jackson as president, as well as seeing you online at selected plant health meetings and other events.

My farewell presents as retiring president of @BS_PP include this original ink drawing by Helen Pennington – @hgpennington which shows Puccinia distincta making daisy rusty. It is particularly fitting since I believe this picture was inspired by one my photos of the first recorded outbreak in Denmark – in my garden. It was undoubtedly overlooked.

We all know how important plant diseases are, and we are all working to reduce their negative impact. In my view BSPP has a major international role in supporting this effort.