Western Small Fruit Pest Conference Records, 1968-1999

The first meeting of the Western Small Fruit Virus Disease Conference was held in Portland, Oregon, in January 1950. For many years prior to 1950, a number of agriculture-related groups met in Portland each year during the second week of January. Many of the meetings were related to the control of insects and diseases. Small fruit crops (specifically strawberries and raspberries) were included in those meetings, but there was not a specific meeting devoted to small fruit diseases.

Individuals working specifically on small fruit diseases held an informal gathering in Portland in January 1949 and decided to develop a more formal meeting, with a program, for January 1950 that would include breeders, plant pathologists, and entomologists. Robert Rosenstiel, a faculty member in the Entomology Department at Oregon State College and specialist on insect pests of small fruits, especially strawberries, was involved in these initial meetings.

The conference included scientists from Oregon, Washington, California, and British Columbia; the role of chair rotated between the 3 states and British Columbia. In the 1950s and 1960s the organization was known as the Western Small Fruit Virus Disease Conference; through the early 1970s, the name Western Small Fruit Disease Conference was used; by the 1990s, it was known as the Western Small Fruit Pest Conference.

Richard H. (Dick) Converse was a plant pathologist and small fruit virus specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service Horticultural Crops Research Laboratory on the Oregon State University campus in Corvallis from the late 1960s until his retirement in 1990.