ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

DECIDUOUS TREE FRUIT DISEASE WORKERS

GRIFFIN CORPORATION (Valdosta, Georgia)

MOBAY CHEMICAL CORPORATION (Kansas City, Missouri)

PFIZER INCORPORATED (New York)

MAAG AGROCHEMICALS, HLR SCIENCES (Vero Beach, Florida)

The Committee is grateful to those participants who agreed to chair the various sessions. The Committee is especially grateful to those who, on short notice, so ably reviewed the session topics prior to the presentation of new results.

The Committee thanks Dr. T. van der Zwet for arranging the Post-Workshop Tour to Kearneysville and Beltsville, and for collecting the manuscripts for the Proceedings of the Workshop.

The Committee thanks Ms. Margaret L. Haus for her expert secretarial assistance in the preparation of the mailings, program, and abstracts for the Workshop. Dr. S. W. Westcott, III is thanked for "Macintoshing" the Program schedule.

The Committee thanks the officers and staff of the International Society for Horticultural Science for participating in the sponsorship of the Workshop and for publishing its Proceedings.


OPENING ADDRESS

Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a great pleasure for me, and a great honour, to welcome you to the Fourth International Workshop on Fire Blight, which is being held under the auspices of International Society for Horticultural Sciences, the Deciduous Tree Fruit Disease Workers, and Cornell University.

I would like first of all, to thank all the people involved in the organization of this meeting; I must quote the names of the members of the Organizing Committee, which is chaired by S. V. BEER; H. S. ALDWINCKLE, J. L. NORELLI, and R. S. WODZINSKI. They certainly did a hard, but obviously efficient, job in preparing the meeting for us all. Of course, we realize that a number of their colleagues were equally involved in the preparation of the meeting; to all of them, we extend our thanks.

I would like to tell you how much I appreciate the number of participants who are attending this meeting, thus showing the very "raison d'etre" for our group. I know that I must add special thanks to those who prepared one or several contributions. (I have seen from the programme how numerous you are.) Thanks to all of you.

The former chairman of the group, G. S. ROOSJE, used to point out in his opening address that from one meeting to another, the list of countries with Fire Blight remained surprisingly the same. This was true in 1980 vs. 1977, and in 1983 vs. 1980. It is no longer true; you are probably all aware of new introductions of the disease in Cyprus and Israel. And this gives me the opportunity to give a special welcome to "new-comers" from these countries, whether present in this room, or not.

Our working group on Fire Blight is rather young, but it has already a history. It was initiated some ten years ago by the late Prof. HELLMERS (Copenhagen). If a summary of its activity is wanted, I would recommend that you have a look of the Proceedings of previous meetings, Wageningen (NL), 1977; Kiel (FRG), 1980; Bordeaux (F), 1983. You will see the increasing number of people involved in the successive meetings, the increasing number of offered contributions, and the increasing "weight" of the Proceedings. All these are clearly indicate the dynamism within the group, and its role in research on Fire Blight. If the contents of the Proceedings is further analysed, and compared to the annual bibliography published yearly in the precious Fire Blight Newsletter by T. VAN DER ZWET, it will be seen clearly that the topics of our meetings reflect completely the whole field of research on Fire Blight, from practical experimentation to very theoretical speculations.

It is often pointed out that in Plant Bacteriology like in other sciences, recent evolution tends to split research people into two sub-groups, one involved in field aspects (epidemiology, control, breeding) and one interested in fundamental topics (genetics, molecular biology). This is probably good and necessary. The danger could be a lack of exchange and communication between these two groups, thus leading to possible misunderstandings. In the case of Fire Blight, this risk seems to be low; the very existence of our group shows that we each are aware of the existence of the others, and that we each need information about the results - either practical or theoretical - of our colleagues conducting Fire Blight research.

What is more, I think that our group, which is aimed at the study of a single disease, could be a model for a possible and necessary synthesis between apparently separate fields of research which are actually aimed at the same goal - to understand and to control the disease.

If this Fourth International Workshop of Fire Blight appears as a step forward in the direction of mutual understanding, then it undoubtedly will be a useful meeting. I am convinced it will be so.

Let me wish now, to us all, a busy and pleasant meeting!

J.-P. PAULIN
Chairmnan, I.S.H.S.
Working Group on Fire Blight