A recent exclusive license agreement between UMass Amherst and LidoChem, Inc., a New Jersey-based wholesale turf and agricultural nutrient supply firm, means a fungus-fighting bacterium discovered and developed by Haim Gunner, professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences, will now be marketed nationally as part of an eco-management approach to plant disease protection.
Gunner, a co-founder of the Environmental Sciences Department in the 1960s, first identified the bacterium Bacillus amyloliquifaciens as a contaminant in a laboratory experiment in the 1990s, when he was trying to grow a