Dale Walters

I am Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC). Before I retired in 2016, I was leader of the Crop Protection research team at SRUC’s campus in Edinburgh. My research interests included induced resistance to plant pathogens, novel approaches to plant disease control, and plant-pathogen interactions. For 35 years I taught Plant Biotic Interactions, Plant Pathology and Plant Responses to Stress, to final year undergraduates.

I have written two textbooks (Plant Defense: warding off attack by pathogens, herbivores, and parasitic plants and Physiological Responses of Plants to Attack ) and edited three others (Induced Resistance for Plant Defense, Disease Control in Crops, and Molecular Biology in Crop Protection). I have also written a popular science book – Fortress Plant: how to survive when everything wants to eat you, published by Oxford University Press in 2017. My latest popular science book, Chocolate Crisis: Climate Change and Other Threats to the Future of Cacao, was published by University Press of Florida on 5 January 2021.

I was born in Tenby, a small seaside town in Pembrokeshire in west Wales in 1957, but spent most of my childhood in Trinidad, where I was lucky to attend Queen’s Royal College in Port-of-Spain. I travelled back to the UK for my university education and did my undergraduate degree at Wye College, University of London, and then travelled north, where I studied for my PhD at Lancaster University. Eighteen years later, I was awarded a DSc from Lancaster University for my research on plant-pathogen interactions. I became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology in 1998.

I live in Prestwick on the beautiful west coast of Scotland with my two dogs, Sparky and Gizmo, and a lovely black cat, Magic.