27 June 1984 Dr Roy Gaunt visits North America to share knowledge on global crop loss

Lincoln College plant pathologist Dr Roy Gaunt is going to North America next week to talk on global crop loss at a training program for scientists in the United States, and at a conference in Canada.

Dr Gaunt, senior lecturer in agricultural microbiology at the college, will go first to the University of Minnesota.

There he will be one of three overseas guest lecturers at an international crop loss training program for scientists outside the United States.

The program is being funded by the U.S Department of Agriculture and the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations.

Dr Gaunt will give three lectures on plant disease measurement, the physiological aspects of crop loss, and the way diseases reduce yields.

He will also run two afternoon training programs on the same topics.

Dr Gaunt will then go on to University of Guelph in Ontario for a meeting of Canadian and American plant pathology organisations.

There he will give a keynote paper on crop loss caused by seed-borne disease.

In the U.S. Dr Gaunt will also go to a planning session of the Crop Loss Committee of the International Society for Pathology.

Dr Gaunt is the only member from New Zealand of the 10-man committee drawn from countries around the world.

The committee meeting will be devoted to planning promotion of international co-operation on crop loss research.

Dr Gaunt said the crop loss training program at Minnesota was an advanced course for established scientists.

"This is linked to an international program by U.S.D.A. and F.A.O. to -"improve science in crop loss work.

"There will be a fifty-fifty mix of people from developed and underdeveloped countries, all of them scientists in crop loss or working towards it," he said.

Dr Gaunt will go on to give seminars on crop loss at five U.S. universities.

He will be away from Lincoln College for about seven weeks. 

Further information from Dr Roy Gaunt, Department of Agricultural Microbiology, Lincoln College, Canterbury, New Zealand.