Dale Walters is Emeritus Professor of Plant Pathology at Scotland's Rural College (SRUC). Until his retirement in February 2016, he was leader of the Crop Protection team at SRUC's campus in Edinburgh, where his research focused on induced resistance to plant pathogens. He obtained his PhD from Lancaster University in 1981 and was awarded a DSc by them in 1999 for his research on plant-pathogen interactions. He is the author of more than 160 scientific papers, has edited three books and has written two textbooks, the latest of which is Physiological Responses of Plants to Attack (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015). His work on induced resistance has been covered in the media.