Name Clara Hasse Education University of Michigan | ||
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Fields Botanist focused on plant pathology Institutions Bureau of Plant Industry, U.S. Department of Agriculture; Florida Agricultural Experiment Station Known for Identified the cause of citrus canker Died 1926, Muskegon, Michigan, United States | ||
Alma mater University of Michigan Author abbrev. (botany) | ||
Clara Henriette Hasse (1880 – 10 October 1926) was an American botanist whose research focused on plant pathology.
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Biography
After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1903 with a PhB. She went to Washington, D.C., to take up an appointment as assistant horticulturist and botanist in the Bureau of Plant Industry at the U.S. Department of Agriculture under Erwin Frink Smith, the USDA's pathologist-in-charge. Hasse was one of the twenty assistants that Smith hired during his tenure at the USDA. She later worked at the Florida Agricultural Experiment Station. Hasse died at her home in Muskegon, Michigan, aged 46.
Research
Her paper "Pseudomonas citri, the cause of Citrus canker", published in the Journal of Agricultural Research in 1915, was the first to identify the cause of citrus canker. While originally it was believed that citrus canker was of fungoid origin, Hasse found that bacteria are at its source. The discovery led to the development of methods for controlling the disease which saved the citrus crops in Florida, Alabama, Texas and Mississippi from being wiped out.