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Worm Named for U of I Scientist

Posted on: Tuesday, 23 October 2007, 09:00 CDT

You can't see a University of Idaho scientist's most recent discovery, but the Longidorella saadi bears his name.

Saad Hafez was doing a day's work last year, looking at soil samples through a microscope, when he saw a nematode he hadn't seen before.

Until he sent it to a British-based intergovernmental scientific organization that studies agricultural and environmental problems, he had no idea that no one had previously identified the microscopic critter. This summer, a taxonomist for the organization named it after him.

"I sent it to them because I didn't know what it was," Havez, 60, said. The organization -- CABI, for Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux International -- "was very generous to name it after me."

Hafez was born in Cairo. He came to the United States in 1975 when he was offered a scholarship at University of California-Davis, where he earned a Ph.D. After he graduated, he was hired to work at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan., before moving to Idaho 26 years ago.

He went into nematology because not very many people were in the field at the time. His research is focused on controlling nematodes and creating educational programs for growers and agents along with recommendations for treatment.

Nematodes are threadlike worms ranging in size from microscopic creatures that feed on plant matter to larger ones that feed on animals. Nematodes include heartworms in dogs and pinworms in people, Hafez said. The largest nematodes can extend more than 25 feet, infesting whales.

According to the University of Idaho, 85 species have been confirmed in Idaho. Some nematodes attack crop tissue or transmit crop diseases. Others are beneficial, destroying grasshoppers and mosquito larvae and recycling organic matter.

People actually eat the mostly invisible nematodes on plants, but "they don't hurt you," Hafez said.

Hafez's find could be one of the good nematodes. It's not biologically equipped to feed on plants or digest their cell contents. It has characteristics that will likely attack fungi or break down organic matter.

"It seems mundane, but for someone who spends his life trying to battle pests like that, it's a real feather in his cap," said John Thompson, director of public relations for the Idaho Farm Bureau in Pocatello. "It shows how much we don't know."

Hafez has been the first to detect the presence of 31 species of nematodes in Idaho.

Google "nematode" and you'll find more than 600,000 links. There's also the Nematode Songbook Web site with songs like "The Happy Nematologist" to the tune of "The Happy Wanderer," and "The Nematode Marching Song" to the tune of "Onward Christian Soldier."

In Idaho, certain nematodes -- not the one named for Hafez -- can devastate potato, sugar beet and onion crops, Thompson said. There are about 330,000 acres of potatoes in Idaho, netting about $700 million to $800 million in a good year, Thompson said. It costs about $2,000 an acre to produce potatoes.

Hafez detected the pale potato cyst nematode in soil from eastern Idaho that resulted in a state quarantine on more than 900 acres last year and prompted Japan to temporarily ban U.S. potato imports and Canada and Mexico to temporarily ban Idaho potatoes.

Those potato fields will be off limits for seven years, planted only with a cover crop of oil radishes, Hafez said. The pale potato cyst nematode is so contagious that farm equip-ment must be steam-cleaned before it can leave the quarantined area.

The pale potato cyst nematode is new in Idaho and in the U.S., he said. It has been reported in Canada but is a European variety. No one knows how it came to the U.S.

"It's a very small animal," Hafez said. "But it can do a lot of damage."

Vickie D. Ashwill: 373-6691

Source: The Idaho Statesman, Boise

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