Robert Brueggeman has joined the NDSU plant pathology department as a barley pathologist and assistant professor. His research specialty is the genetics and molecular biology of cereal disease resistance.

Brueggeman is working on the rapid deployment of resistance to the virulent race of Ug99 wheat stem rust, which also affects barley. The rust disease has emerged in Uganda and eventually could move to North America.

Fusarium head blight, another difficult disease of barley and wheat, also is a focus of Brueggeman’s research. He is establishing a nursery at the NDSU Langdon Research Extension Center to evaluate barley lines for resistance.

Brueggeman is collaborating with Timothy Friesen at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Northern Plains Research Center in Fargo to identify spot-type net blotch and net-type net blotch-resistant barley varieties. Spot-type net blotch is an economically damaging foliar barley disease in many cereal-producing regions of the world. It recently was identified in North Dakota.

Brueggeman completed his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at Washington State University where he also worked in the barley molecular genetics/genomics lab for 12 years.