About the Researchers

Professor Benham E.L. Lockhart was born in Kingstown, St. Vincent, the West Indies, in 1945. He earned his Bachelor’s of Science degree in Tropical Agriculture at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad in 1965, and his Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from the University of California at Riverside in 1969. Between 1969 and 1971, he was a post-doctoral fellow with M.K. Brakke at the University of Nebraska and with D.E. Schlegel at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been a faculty member of the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of Minnesota since 1971. 

That same year, he began an intensive effort to develop modern plant virus research laboratories in Morocco and launched a highly successful program to train Moroccan students in modern plant virology. Advanced students trained abroad, then returned to Morocco to do more detailed research on local Moroccan virus problems. They received their Ph.D. under Dr. Lockhart’s supervision. In 1975, King Hassan II of Morocco personally visited Professor Lockhart and his students at his plant virology laboratory at Hassan II University. 

Lockhart’s own research program at the University of Minnesota led to the discovery of badnaviruses, economically important non-enveloped bacilliform plant viruses transmitted by mealybugs and through seed. Lockhart and colleagues showed the dsDNA (double-stranded DNA) nature of the badnavirus genomes and that the badnaviruses replicated via reverse transcription (that is, by copying RNA back into DNA). Most recently, he and his colleagues discovered that badnavirus sequences can be integrated into the plant chromosomal DNA and can cause whole plant infections after “activation” to give episomal replicating virus (that is, to replicate the virus from the plant’s own modified DNA). Dr. Lockhart’s many significant contributions to international science and agriculture, and to fundamental plant virus research, are widely recognized among his peers worldwide.

Grace Anderson is a lifelong gardener who remembers from her childhood in rural Maryland, a large hosta that grew by the back porcH. She used to take flower stems from the “plantain lily” when no one was looking; using them in small bouquets she kept in her room. During a career in health care she kept her love of gardening and horticulture alive as a Master Gardener for Hennepin County in Minnesota. She just completed 20 years in this program, where she has been involved in community education, plant health care and tree care, among other things. Her home garden is full of hostas of all sizes and shapes and includes a fairy garden with the tiniest varieties she can get.

Anderson recently returned to the University of Minnesota, where she is a Master of Agriculture in Horticulture student and works for the Plant Disease Clinic. The opportunity to work with Dr. Lockhart and the AHS is the perfect Master’s project for her, since she has both practical and professional experience in plant diseases and, like all of us, wants to know more about HVX and how to control it. She was looking for an applicable, useful study that could be shared with gardeners both professional and private. After meeting with the AHS, she decided no other project would do. “When I tell my friends what I am doing, they all tell me to hurry up!” she says. “Everyone wants to know more about this disease and how to prevent it.”