Researchers guess sudden oak death has cost California
landowners several million dollars. The cost to Oregon could be far
greater.
While California's infestation is widespread, it mostly
has hit
semi-urban areas, where it has damaged property values. The disease
is only beginning to reach Northern California's timber
industry.
Monday, September 19, 2011
Investigating the Spread of Infectious Diseases With NSF, NIH, U.K. Funding
How diseases are transmitted among humans, other animals, the environment is focus.
By improving our understanding of the factors affecting disease transmission, the projects will help produce models to predict and control outbreaks. Funding is from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Disease (EEID) Program. It is also being provided by the U.K. Ecology of Infectious Diseases Initiative of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), and U.K. Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).
Among the systems being studied is SOD:
Title: Interacting disturbances: leaf to landscape dynamics of emerging disease, fire and drought in California coastal forests
PI: David Rizzo, University of California - Davis
Summary: This research aims to better understand how the interaction of multiple factors like wildfire, drought, biodiversity and nutrient cycles can interact to regulate disease dynamics. Using long-term studies of sudden oak death, estimated to have killed millions of trees in the western U.S., scientists hope to gain new insights about how the emergence, persistence and spread of a pathogen is controlled by environmental disturbance.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Job posting
This job is available to a qualified person with an interest in SOD:
A plant pathologist research position is available at NORS-DUC. Responsibilities include working collaboratively with NORS-DUC scientists, training undergraduates using NORS-DUC research as a teaching tool, developing and carrying out new projects based on NORS-DUC P. ramorum research priorities, and assisting with NORS-DUC-related grant writing. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position filled. For more information, contact Sibdas Ghosh by email or at (415) 482-3583.
A plant pathologist research position is available at NORS-DUC. Responsibilities include working collaboratively with NORS-DUC scientists, training undergraduates using NORS-DUC research as a teaching tool, developing and carrying out new projects based on NORS-DUC P. ramorum research priorities, and assisting with NORS-DUC-related grant writing. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position filled. For more information, contact Sibdas Ghosh by email or at (415) 482-3583.
Current Research at NORS-DUC
The mission of the National Ornamentals Research Site
at Dominican University of California is to identify, prioritize,
facilitate and conduct research related to pests and diseases of nursery
stock while safeguarding plant health and the environment.
NORS-DUC is the first research site in the United States
dedicated to the study of pests and diseases affecting the health of
ornamental plants. The facility is funded by a grant from the 2008 Farm
Bill, administered through the United States Department of Agriculture
(USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Plant
Protection and Quarantine (PPQ) Center for Plant Health Science and
Technology (CPHST).
http://www.dominican.edu/academics/hns/sciencemath/community-partnerships-and-initiatives/norsduc/research-at-nors-duc.html
Research article: Phytophthora ramorum in England and Wales: which environmental variables predict county disease incidence?
Chadfield,
V. and Pautasso, M. 2011. Phytophthora ramorum in
England and Wales: which environmental variables predict county disease
incidence? Forest Pathology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1439-0329.2011.
Abstract: Phytophthora ramorum is the oomycete pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death on the West Coast of the USA and Sudden Larch Death in the British Isles. It also causes twig dieback and leaf blight on a series of ornamental hosts (e.g. Rhododendron, Viburnum, Pieris and Camellia) commonly grown in plant nurseries, traded by garden centers and cultivated in public and private gardens. The role of the plant trade in the dispersal of P. ramorum has been well documented, but there is a need for regional analyses of which environmental variables can predict disease expression in the trade and in the wild, so as to be able to better predict the further development of this worldwide plant health issue. In this study, we analyze data on the incidence of P. ramorum (2002–2009, thus before the reports in Japanese larch plantations) in counties in England and Wales as a function of environmental variables such as temperature and rainfall, controlling for confounding factors such as county area, human population and spatial autocorrelation. While P. ramorum county incidence in nurseries and retail centers was positively related to county area and human population density, county incidence in gardens and the wild did not show such correlations, declined significantly towards the East and was positively correlated with disease incidence in the trade. The latter finding, although not conclusively proving causation, suggests a role of the trade in the dispersal of this pathogen across English and Welsh landscapes. Combined together, P. ramorum county incidence in the trade and in the semi-natural environment increased with increasing precipitation and with declining latitude. This study shows the importance of environmental variables in shaping regional plant epidemics, but also yields results that are suggestive of a role of people in spreading plant diseases across entire countries.
Abstract: Phytophthora ramorum is the oomycete pathogen responsible for Sudden Oak Death on the West Coast of the USA and Sudden Larch Death in the British Isles. It also causes twig dieback and leaf blight on a series of ornamental hosts (e.g. Rhododendron, Viburnum, Pieris and Camellia) commonly grown in plant nurseries, traded by garden centers and cultivated in public and private gardens. The role of the plant trade in the dispersal of P. ramorum has been well documented, but there is a need for regional analyses of which environmental variables can predict disease expression in the trade and in the wild, so as to be able to better predict the further development of this worldwide plant health issue. In this study, we analyze data on the incidence of P. ramorum (2002–2009, thus before the reports in Japanese larch plantations) in counties in England and Wales as a function of environmental variables such as temperature and rainfall, controlling for confounding factors such as county area, human population and spatial autocorrelation. While P. ramorum county incidence in nurseries and retail centers was positively related to county area and human population density, county incidence in gardens and the wild did not show such correlations, declined significantly towards the East and was positively correlated with disease incidence in the trade. The latter finding, although not conclusively proving causation, suggests a role of the trade in the dispersal of this pathogen across English and Welsh landscapes. Combined together, P. ramorum county incidence in the trade and in the semi-natural environment increased with increasing precipitation and with declining latitude. This study shows the importance of environmental variables in shaping regional plant epidemics, but also yields results that are suggestive of a role of people in spreading plant diseases across entire countries.
P. ramorum in water workshop now on the web
Preventing the spread of Phytophthora ramorum via water was the focus of a 2 ½ day workshop in Puyallup, WA, June 28-30, 2011. Attended by over 50 regulators, researchers, and industry representatives from the western and southeastern US, as well as Washington, DC, the workshop's mission was to coalesce research, management, and regulations for effective, economical, and environmentally acceptable ways of limiting P. ramorum spread via contaminated nursery water runoff. The group began the meeting with a visit to the site of a previously positive Gig Harbor retail nursery (where P. ramorum-infested water had escaped the nursery and infected riparian salal plants) to review treatments and mitigations implemented. Meeting presentations addressed the incidence and distribution of P. ramorum detections in waterways, water baiting techniques, risks and impacts for WA, and treatments to reduce the risk of spreading inoculum in water. Research and education/outreach needs were identified, with group exercises and discussion concentrated on nursery treatments as well as water management, monitoring, and notification of downstream users of contaminated water. More information on the workshop can be found at: http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/ppo/sod/extension/workshops/Pr_water_jun_2011/index.html. The meeting was organized by Gary Chastagner, Washington State University, and Susan Frankel, USDA-Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, and sponsored by Washington State University and the California Oak Mortality Task Force.
Officials shift approach to sudden oak death
Ten years after initiating a campaign to eradicate sudden oak death in Oregon forests, state officials are moving to Plan B.
"There is more to treat now than we have resources to treat," administrator of the Oregon Department of Agriculture's Plant Division Dan Hilburn said at a recent Oregon Board of Agriculture meeting. "The program has to change. There is no way we can treat this as an eradication program."
The change in strategy -- from eradication to containment -- comes at a time when the disease is spreading rapidly and funding for controlling it is shrinking.
Capital Press Posted: Tuesday, September 06, 2011 10:39 AM
Colourful allure of sudden oak death
Sudden oak death doesn't sound pretty but snap it with the right camera, from the right angle, and it can look alluring.
This forest in Cheshire, UK is one that's already known to suffer from sudden oak death, or Phytopthora ramorum. The firm APEM in Manchester used one of only two Leica RCD30 cameras in the world to photograph it from an aeroplane. With the ability to capture visible light and near-infrared, the 60 megapixel, £35,000 camera being tested as a method of diagnosing diseased trees.
See it here: http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2011/09/camera-reveals-tree-disease.html
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