Oscar Hurtado’s scientific career was launched after receiving a scholarship at the International Potato Center, Lima, Peru to study the inheritance of resistance to Phytophthora infestans in diploid potato populations. He obtained a master’s degree studying host changes upon parasitic plant colonization at Virginia Tech and earned his Ph.D. degree studying the genetics and genomics of Phytophthora capsici at The University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He continued with a Postdoctoral scholarship studying secreted proteins of the rice blast pathogen, Magnaporthe oryzae in the department of Plant Pathology at the University of Kentucky in Dr. Farman’s lab before being recruited by Pioneer Dupont in Johnston, Iowa to lead a molecular breeding team to support rice and cotton breeders in India and Southeast Asia. He later moved to ARS to study and exploited the world-wide collection of rust isolates at Beltsville and led multiple common bean disease genetic endeavors with Dr. Pastor-Corrales after which he took the current position with APHIS, still in Beltsville, Maryland, to lead the largest federal diagnostic fruit tree unit of the Plant Quarantine Germplasm Program since 2018.