Iraj Misaghi works to protect the environment while trying, at the same time, to protect crops. He has developed a biological method to control aflatoxin in cottonseed. This is extremely important, not only for cotton growers, but also for dairymen who feed the cottonseed to cows, and ultimately for the people who drink the milk. Now Iraj, an associate professor in the Department of Plant Pathology, has developed a bacterial control for rhizoctonia-induced damping-off in cotton and other plant seedlings, which causes their death. "The biological control works better than chemicals and it's non-damaging to the environment," Iraj says. In addition to his research program, he teaches an undergraduate course in basic plant pathology. After Iraj earned his doctorate in plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, he studied and worked there with plant disease physiology. "My early work concerned how diseases develop, how pathogens attack and how plants protect themselves," he says. In 1978, he moved to the UA and in 1982 wrote a book on disease physiology. A native of Iran, he left that country for the United States when he was 23 years old. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen and has never been back to Iran.