Monday, August 9, 2010

Adorn fungicide registered for use in California

Valent’s new chemistry provides control of key diseases, resistance management.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. – Valent Professional Products announced that Adorn fungicide has been registered for use on ornamentals in California. Adorn is a new chemistry that controls downy mildew, Phytophthora and Pythium in greenhouse, nursery and outdoor landscape settings.

Available for use as a spray or drench, Adorn is effective against a number of diseases affecting California ornamentals, including sudden oak death (SOD) or Phytophthora ramorum. With a new mode of action, Adorn is also an excellent addition to fungicide rotations and plays a key role in resistance management programs when used as part of a tank mix.

Adorn has low-use rates of 1 to 2 ounces per 100 gallons as a drench and 2 to 4 ounces per 100 gallons as a spray. With its translaminar activity, Adorn provides enhanced plant coverage to help ensure growers and LCOs get more from their fungicide.

Lawn & Landscape

Download the label for Adorn Fungicide

Swansea Bay rally halted after tree disease

The Swansea Bay Rally, postponed last month due to a tree disease, has been cancelled for 2010, say organisers.

The event, due to start and finish outside Swansea Museum on 17 July, was called off at short notice.

The route, near Resolven and Rhondda, went through areas that have been hit by the Phytophthora ramorum infection, also known as as "sudden oak death".

Rally organisers said the event could not be re-scheduled to take other qualifying rounds into account.

The rally, which has been running for almost 40 years, is part of the MSA National Gravel Rally Championship.

Around 80 semi-professional and club drivers were due to take part.

read the whole article on BBC News

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Research projects funded by USFS

Including some at WSU:

The USDA Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station Sudden Oak Death/P. ramorum research program list of 2010 funded projects is now available at http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/programs/sod/funding/FY2010PSWSODFunding.pdf.

Thirteen new projects as well as 14 continuing projects were funded, for a total of $1,401,441. For more information, contact Susan Frankel at sfrankel@fs.fed.us.

Nursery update for WA and OR

A King County, Washington retail nursery was found to have six
P. ramorum-positive rhododendrons in July. This nursery was also found positive for the pathogen in 2004, 2005, and 2006. CNP is underway. To date in 2010, the Washington State Department of Agriculture has processed more than 13,000 samples and detected P. ramorum at eight nurseries. For more information, contact Brad White at bwhite@agr.wa.gov.

A Washington County, Oregon retail nursery was found with two
P. ramorum-positive Rhododendron plants in mid-July. The nursery requested a survey after identifying a potential out-of-state customer. Prior to the confirmation, the nursery had not shipped interstate. This is the first time P. ramorum has been detected in this nursery. The USDA Retail CNP has been enacted.

As of 7/21, the Oregon Department of Agriculture has completed testing for the 2010 P. ramorum Federal Order Survey on 15,670 samples collected from 392 nursery grower locations. So far, P. ramorum has been detected in seven Oregon nurseries, with three nurseries having completed the CNP. For more information, contact Nancy Osterbauer at nosterba@oda.state.or.us.

From the August COMTF newsletter

SOD situation in Britain

Britain's Forestry Commission is continuing to try to minimize the spread of P. ramorum by felling tens of thousands of Japanese larch (Larix kaempferi), first found to be a sporulating host in southwest England in fall 2009. Since then, thousands of trees have died. Follow-up aerial surveys in southwest England and Wales, and up into western Scotland, have identified 203 suspicious sites in a mix of privately owned and Forestry Commission public woodlands in England and Wales. Of these, 42 sites in southwest England and eight in Wales have confirmed infestations. More than 30 hectares of trees were felled last winter, with an additional 250 hectares planned for removal this summer and fall. Felling is continuing in the southwest England counties of Devon and Cornwall, including Plym Woods, a popular forest for public recreation near the city of Plymouth, and is getting under way in Wales. The Forestry Commission hopes that by taking decisive action in southwest England and south Wales it can prevent the pathogen from spreading further into Britain.

Affected forests are remaining open to visitors, except for areas where felling is taking place, due to safety reasons. Visitors are being asked to stay on stone paths, keep dogs on short leads, and clean shoes and bikes before leaving infested areas. Private landowners are also being asked to regularly inspect woodlands where larch is present and to report any suspected P. ramorum outbreaks to the Forestry Commission. For more information, go to http://www.forestry.gov.uk/pramorum.

From the August COMTF newsletter

Monday, July 26, 2010

Key Finding: Many Pathogenic Fungi Use the Same Entrance to Invade Host Cells

Some crop--and even human--diseases might be stopped dead in their tracks if researchers can harness a new discovery about how pathogens first infect their hosts.

Like a burglar with a universal lock pick, many deadly pathogens use the same protein to gain access to the cells of a potential host, researchers have discovered. The new findings could have implications for blocking infections by agents ranging from wheat rust to malaria.

Pathogenic fungi, such as flax rust and soybean rust, and similar pathogens known as oomycetes, such as the organism behind the Irish potato famine and sudden oak death, make similar proteins to disarm their hosts' defenses. But to work, these effector proteins need to first make their way inside of a cell. And until now, scientists did not know, in the first place, how these compounds were able to break in.

A new study, published online July 22 in Cell describes how these blights do it.


Read the full article in Scientific American

Monday, July 12, 2010

Schmidt, D. and Garbelotto, M. 2010. Efficacy of phosphonate treatments against Sudden Oak Death in tanoaks. Phytopathology 100:S115.

Pytophthora ramorum, the causal agent of Sudden Oak Death (SOD), has killed hundreds of thousands of trees in California and Oregon. Tanoaks (Lithocarpus densiflorus) are both stem and foliar hosts and, as such, die from SOD and help spread the disease. Phosphonate treatments are routinely used in agricultural and orchard crops affected by Phytophthora diseases. We have developed a detached-leaf bioassay for studying the effectiveness of phosphonate treatments for SOD in tanoaks. The assay involves infecting the petioles of tanoak leaves with agar plugs of P. ramorum in culture. SOD infection is analyzed by examining the spread of P. ramorum down the midrib of the leaf. This assay has shown that tanoaks in wildland settings, treated with phosphonates, are resistant to SOD infection. In addition, we are maintaining long-term studies of tanoaks treated with phosphonates in SOD infected forest areas. Paired 20mx20m treatment and control plots were established near existing SOD infections. The trees were evaluated for disease symptoms and general health prior to the initial treatment and each subsequent year. The results show that phosphonate treatments are effective at slowing and preventing the spread of the disease in the treated areas. Treatments at the leading edge of SOD infected areas were less effective, confirming that phosphonate treatments are significantly more effective as preventative rather than curative treatments.