John Ingram Pitt (13 March 1937 – 23 March 2022) was an Australian mycologist, known as a leading expert on the role of fungi in food spoilage.[1][2][3] He gained an international reputation as a pioneering researcher on the ecology of spoilage moulds in extreme environments and of dried fruits and other foodstuffs.[4]

Education and career

John I. Pitt was born and grew up on a small farm near Wamberal, New South Wales. After attending Gosford High School, he moved to Sydney. In 1954, he became an employee of the Australian Government's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). He began at CSIRO as a Technical Assistant Grade 1 (Junior), was slowly but steadily promoted over many years, and was appointed a Chief Research Scientist in 1992 when he reached the age of 55.[1] At the time of his death in 2022, he was the only CSIRO employee in its history to start at the lowest research employment grade and to go through all of the research grades up to the highest level.[5][6] He retired from CSIRO in 2002.[1]

After joining CSIRO in 1954, he became a part-time student at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), where he studied food technology. At UNSW he completed a seven-year course of study in eight years, followed by an M.Sc. qualifying course, and then a part-time M.Sc. program. His 1965 M.Sc. thesis is entitled Microbiological Problems in Prune Preservation. On leave of absence from CSIRO, he became in 1965 a graduate student at the University of California, Davis. He graduated there with a Ph.D. in 1968. His Ph.D. thesis (on the taxonomy of Metschnikowia)[1] is entitled The yeast genus Metschnikowia.[7] His thesis advisor was Martin Wesley Miller (1925–2005) in the UC Davis department of food science and technology.[8] After completing his Ph.D., Pitt spent a postdoctoral year at the USDA's Northern Regional Research Laboratory (NRRL), where his supervisor was Clifford William Hesseltine (1917–1999).[1] At the USDA Pitt studied Penicillium taxonomy and mycotoxin occurrences in food chains. When his postdoctoral fellowship ended, he returned to CSIRO[4] and wrote a paper with John H. B. Christian.[9][10]

Michael Vincent Tracey, who was the Chief of the CSIRO Division of Food Research from 1967 to 1978,[11] asked Pitt to systematically monitor the mycotoxins threatening food safety.[1] Pitt used many fungal cultures obtained from NRRL during his postdoctoral fellowship to establish at CSIRO a yeast and mould collection, which by the year 2021 had about 6000 specimens. The fungal collection is officially known as the FRR culture collection and has major importance in food and industrial applications. The FRR culture collection is particularly strong in Penicillium and Aspergillus species and their related teleomorphs. The collection contains what might be the world's most comprehensive collection of xerophilic fungi.[12] The collection is the basis for Pitt's book The Genus Penicillium and its teleomorphic States Eupenicillium and Talaromyces (Academic Press, 1980) and the book Fungi and Food Spoilage (Academic Press, 1985), coauthored by Ailsa Diane Hocking.[1] The book extensively describes fungal species that cause spoilage of fruits and vegetables,[13] as well as fungal species implicated in spoilage of dairy foods, meats, cereals, nuts, and oilseeds. By 2023 Fungi and Food Spoilage went through 4 editions and was cited over 5800 times.

From the 1970s to 1990s, Pitt and Hocking did pioneering research on methods for isolating and identifying foodborne fungi, as well as their physiology and ecology. The main focus of the research was on xerophilic fungi. Pitt and Hocking did research for the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR) on the fungi and mycotoxins that occur in food commodities from Indonesia and Southeast Asia. Pitt became a leading authority on the specific fungi that produce specific mycotoxins. In the 1980s he investigated the role of the environment in problems with aflatoxin in peanuts grown in Australia. He pioneered biocontrol by competitive exclusion (replacing toxigenic fungal strains by non-toxigenic fungal strains) for controlling aflatoxin formation in peanuts and maize.[1] Pitt with three collaborators discovered in 1986 the species Aspergillus pisci (called by them Polypaecilum pisce).[14]

Pitt was the author or coauthor of many papers related to the ecology of moulds that cause food spoilage.[4] He, with his frequent collaborator Ailsa D. Hocking, did research on how to prevent food spoilage caused by the fungi genera Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Cladosporium, along with the yeast species Zygosaccharomyces bailii[15][16][17] [18][19]

Pitt was the author, coauthor, editor, or co-editor of 20 books. He was the author or coauthor of about 250 research papers or book chapters. In 2019 his Google Scholar h-index exceeded 60.[1]

Pitt was honoured with three Honorary Life Memberships: from the Australian Society from Microbiology in 2000, from the Mycological Society of America in 2001, and from the British Mycological Society in 2003. He won several awards, most notably the Commonwealth of Australia's Centenary Medal with citation for “services to food science and technology”.[1]

Selected publications

Articles

Books

  • Pitt, John I.; Hocking, Ailsa D. (2023). Fungi and Food Spoilage (4th ed.). Springer. ISBN 9783030856403.
    • 1st edition. Academic Press. 1985. ISBN 0125577303. LCCN 85072477.
    • Pitt, John I.; Hocking, A. D. (13 November 2012). 2012 pbk reprint of 1997 2nd edition. Springer. ISBN 978-1461379362.)
    • Pitt, John I.; Hocking, Ailsa D. (25 July 2009). 2009 3rd edition. Springer. ISBN 978-1489984098.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Wolff, Helen (3 April 2019). "John Ingram Pitt". CSIROpedia.
  2. ↑ Pitt, John I.; Hocking, Ailsa D. (2022). "Spoilage of Stored, Processed and Preserved Foods". Fungi and Food Spoilage. pp. 537–568. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-85640-3_12. ISBN 978-3-030-85638-0.
  3. ↑ Duckworth, R. (2 December 2012). Water Relations of Foods: Proceedings of an International Symposium held in Glasgow, September 1974. Elsevier. ISBN 9780323142861.
  4. 1 2 3 Magan, Naresh (28 March 2022). "John Ingram Pitt 1937-2022". British Mycological Society.
  5. ↑ Hocking, Ailsa; Carter, Dee; Meyer, Wieland. "Obituary for John Ingram Pitt 1937-2022". International Mycological Association.; duplicate posting: "John Ingram Pitt 1937-2022". International Society for Human and Animal Mycology (ISHAM).
  6. ↑ "John Pitt: An Oral History". YouTube. Dustin Howard; Interview with Dr Meredith Blackwell, Emeritus Professor at Louisiana State University, recorded at International Mycological Congress, San Juan, Puerto Rice in July 2018{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: postscript (link)
  7. ↑ Pitt, John I. "The yeast genus Metschnikowia". WorldCat database entry.
  8. ↑ Pitt, J. I.; Miller, M. W. (1968). "Sporulation in Candida Pulcherrima, Candida Reukaufii and Chlamydozyma Species: Their Relationships with Metschnikowia". Mycologia. 60 (3): 663–685. doi:10.1080/00275514.1968.12018616.
  9. ↑ Pitt, J. I.; Christian, J. H. B. (1970). "Heat Resistance of Xerophilic Fungi Based on Microscopical Assessment of Spore Survival". Applied Microbiology. 20 (5): 682–686. doi:10.1128/am.20.5.682-686.1970. PMC 377025. PMID 5485080. S2CID 237232100.
  10. ↑ "J. H. B. Christian, BScAgr, PhD, FABFST, FFTS Chief of the CSlRO Division of Food Research" (PDF). CSIRO Alumni. 39 (3/4): 49. December 1979.
  11. ↑ Proceedings of the Nutrition Society of Australia. 1987. p. viii.
  12. ↑ "Our food research culture collection of fungal strains of importance to the food industry". Microbiology services for the food industry, CSIRO. 2021.
  13. ↑ Moss, Maurice O. (2008). "Fungi, quality and safety issues in fresh fruits and vegetables". Journal of Applied Microbiology. 104 (5): 1239–1243. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2672.2007.03705.x. PMID 18217939. S2CID 26071096.
  14. ↑ Wheeler, Kathryn A.; Hocking, Ailsa D.; Pitt, J. I.; Anggawati, Agnes N. (1986). "Fungi associated with Indonesian dried fish". Food Microbiology. 3 (4): 351–357. doi:10.1016/0740-0020(86)90020-1.
  15. ↑ Pitt; Hocking (September 1989). "Modern media and methods in food technology" (PDF). Culture. Oxoid Ltd. 10 (2).
  16. ↑ Pitt, John I.; Hocking, Ailsa D. (2022). "Ecology of Fungal Food Spoilage". Fungi and Food Spoilage. pp. 3–12. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-85640-3_2. ISBN 978-3-030-85638-0.
  17. ↑ Hocking, Ailsa D.; Miscamble, Beverly F.; Pitt, J.I. (1994). "Water relations of Alternaria alternata, Cladosporium cladosporioides, Cladosporium sphaerospermum, Curvularia lunata and Curvularia pallescens". Mycological Research. 98: 91–94. doi:10.1016/S0953-7562(09)80344-4.
  18. ↑ Andrews, S.; Pitt, J. I. (1986). "Selective medium for isolation of Fusarium species and dematiaceous hyphomycetes from cereals". Applied and Environmental Microbiology. 51 (6): 1235–1238. Bibcode:1986ApEnM..51.1235A. doi:10.1128/aem.51.6.1235-1238.1986. PMC 239051. PMID 3729399.
  19. ↑ Webley, D.J.; Jackson, K.L.; Mullins, J.D.; Hocking, A.D.; Pitt, J.I. (1997). "Alternaria toxins in weather-damaged wheat and sorghum in the 1995-1996 Australian harvest". Australian Journal of Agricultural Research. 48 (8): 1249–1256. doi:10.1071/A97005.
  20. ↑ International Plant Names Index.  Pitt.
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