Plant Pathology and Biotechnology: Choosing Your Weapons

In this chapter I trace some threads of personal history and comment on the nature of host resistance and pathogen virulence, aspects of plant pathology that have interested me for most of my career. Basic research in plant pathology is more fashionable, and certainly more fundable, than in the days when practical considerations of disease control dominated the work of most plant pathologists. There is still a great deal of this basic research to do. Satisfying your curiosity is fun, but if you can do something useful for society at the same time it is even more rewarding.