Chair 2018-present. Gert Kema entered the department as special professor of tropical phytopathology. Before focusing on perennial crops, such as banana, he worked for many years on the foliar wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici. During his career he served the Royal Netherlands Society of Plant Pathology for a decade as president, has contributed to a range of committees to support plant breeding and plant pathology and (co)founded several companies.