Xianming Chen
Adjunct Professor
USDA-Washington State University
USA
Biography
Xianming Chen grew up in a small village in Shaanxi, China. He earned a B.S. degree in plant protection from Northwest Agricultural University in 1982 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in plant pathology from Washington State University (WSU) in 1987 and 1991, respectively. After working as a post-doctoral research associate at WSU from 1991 to 1997 and a post-doctoral plant geneticist with the USDA-ARS from 1997 to 2000, he was hired as a research plant pathologist in the USDA-ARS Wheat Genetics, Quality, Physiology, and Disease Research Unit and was appointed as an adjunct faculty in the WSU Department of Plant Pathology in 2000. His research program focuses on the control of rusts of cereal crops.
Research Interest
Foliar diseases of wheat and barley, especially rusts. Epidemiology and control of rusts, including cultural, chemical, and disease resistance. Development of models for predicting rust epidemics. Races, population structures, genome and functional genomics of the stripe rust pathogen. Identification and characterization of resistant germplasm. Genetics of disease resistance. Molecular mapping and cloning genes for resistance to stripe rust. Determination of molecular mechanisms of plant-pathogen interactions. Improvement of rust resistance in wheat and barley using marker-assisted selection.