WSU, Bee Industry Partner to Study CCD
Washington State University scientists and Pacific Northwest beekeepers are joining forces to find out what is causing the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder that has wiped out thousands of hives throughout the region over the past several years.
Two large beekeepers in the Pacific Northwest--Eric Olson of Yakima and Tom Hamilton of Nampa, Idaho--have made donations as seed money for the research. Noyes Apiaries in New Plymouth, Idaho, the Idaho Honey Association and the Washington State Beekeepers Registration Fund also have made contributions. With those donations and dedicated funds from the WSU Agricultural Research Center, researchers will spend nearly $200,000 over the next two years to look at causes and possible treatments for the disease.
“Hive health is critically important to the bee industry in Washington, and bees are essential to pollinate many of our important crops,” said Ralph Cavalieri, associate dean in the WSU College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences and director of the Agricultural Research Center. “The financial partnership with the beekeepers will bolster our scientists’ work on this urgently important issue. This is a great start.”
The Washington State Beekeepers Association estimates overall statewide losses to the disease at between 35 percent and 50 percent in recent years. With eight of 10 of Washington’s most valuable crops--including apples--being “bee dependent,” Colony Collapse Disorder left unchecked could jeopardize the state’s agricultural economy.
Richard Zack, chair of the WSU department of entomology, said Colony Collapse Disorder is just the latest in a number of factors that have threatened the bee-keeping industry for many years.
“This is a long-term problem that started a number of years ago,” he said. “The people who can provide commercial pollinating services are disappearing, and if we solve this specific problem, another one will come along. The goal of this research is to build a program that can help the industry become sustainable again no matter what happens in terms of disease, nutrition and a thousand other factors.”
Highly adaptable
WSU Releases Four New Wheat Varieties
WSU has released four new wheat varieties for commercialization, including Xerpha, a soft-white common winter wheat, which is highly adapted to a broad range of production zones in Washington, Oregon, southern Idaho and northern California.
“WSU’s job is to work in partnership with industry so growers will have the best varieties possible,” said Ralph Cavalieri, director of the Agricultural Research Center and associate dean of the College of Agricultural, Human and Natural Resource Sciences. “These new varieties are the product of good science, hard work and the dedication of our breeding teams.”
In 2006 and 2007, Xerpha, a product of Steve Jones winter wheat breeding program, was the highest yielding variety in every precipitation zone in the WSU Extension Cereal Variety Testing Program where it was compared with 50 other varieties, breeding lines and varietal blends from 10 other programs at 19 locations.
Jones named the wheat in honor of Xerpha Gaines, a WSU botanist, and wife of Edward Gaines, a prominent early agronomist at WSU.
Farnum, Whit and Kelse, three varieties from Kim Kidwell’s breeding program, also were approved for final release.
Farnum, a high yielding, hard red winter wheat, is named for a major road in the Horse Heaven Hills where the variety is targeted. The variety carries an early senescence gene associated with high grain protein content as well as a slow rusting gene for stripe rust.
Kidwell collaborated with Jones and Kim Campbell, USDA-ARS wheat geneticist on this variety.
Whit, a soft white common spring wheat, is named for and suited for production in Whitman County although it also has performed well in Latah County, Idaho. It has high-temperature, adult plant resistance to stripe rust and Hessian fly resistance.
“We expect it to replace Nick, Alpowa and some Louise in the high rainfall region,” said Kidwell, who was appointed associate dean for academic programs of the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences last summer.
Kelse, named in honor of one of Kidwell’s nieces, is a high protein hard red spring wheat for the intermediate to high rainfall zone. “Kelse is the first hard red spring wheat variety developed by our program with excellent race-specific all-stage resistance and indications of durable high-temperature, adult plant resistance to stripe rust,” Kidwell said.
WSU’s reorganized Cereal Variety Release Committee, which includes greater industry input, recommended final release of these varieties at its Feb. 21 meeting. Cavalieri approved the releases on behalf of the Agricultural Research Center.
The committee approved two other lines for breeder seed increase signaling their release as early as next year.
WSU and the WSU Research Foundation agree to offer the Washington Wheat Commission or a Commission-affiliated corporation, hereinafter referred to as “Affiliate,” the first right to negotiate a worldwide, exclusive license to any new wheat varieties developed by University researchers where Commission funding has been used during the development process.
The Washington State Crop Improvement Association will have foundation seed for Farnum and Xerpha for commercial application in the fall of 2008. Foundation seed for Kelse and Whit will be available in the spring of 2009.
Reducing Losses by Reducing Rots
The old saying is true: One rotten apple can spoil the whole
bunch. For the tree fruit industry, post-harvest rots in pome
fruit (apples and pears) can result in losses of 50 to 60 percent
in storage bins prior to packing, costing the industry
millions of dollars annually.
Thanks to the research of Washington State University
associate plant pathologist Chang-Lin Xiao at the Tree Fruit
Research and Extension Center in Wenatchee, the industry
is well on its way to significantly reducing losses due to rots
caused by fungal pathogens.
Over the past five years, Xiao has discovered three new
pathogens responsible for post-harvest rots in pome fruit in
the United States. His reports on two of them were the first
in the world and their causal agents have been described as
new fungal species. They have been found to be responsible
for as much as one-fifth of the losses resulting from postharvest
decay in Red Delicious apples and one-third of the
losses in d’Anjou pears in Washington state.
“These pathogens colonize while the fruit is in the orchard
and remain latent until post harvest,” according to Xiao.
“We’ve found that with appropriate pre-harvest or postharvest
fungicide treatments we can significantly reduce
the post-harvest rot problem.”
Xiao advocates better communication between orchardists
and fruit packers to coordinate the different fungicide
applications they use.
“Pre-harvest treatment is effective, and by reducing the
need for post-harvest treatment, it also helps to avoid
these pathogens developing resistance to post-harvest
fungicides,” Xiao said.
Xiao’s research is also pursuing more effective treatments
for two other common post-harvest diseases, gray mold and
blue mold, which infect punctures and bruises on the fruit.
He advocates keeping orchards clean of decayed fruit and
organic debris to reduce the presence of the pathogens,
good harvest management to avoid punctures and bruises
on the fruit skin during harvest, and appropriate fungicide
treatment for each.
“The goal of my research is to develop an integrated
approach to pre- and post-harvest treatments to control
pathogens,” Xiao said. “We are working to reduce losses
that result from multiple diseases, not just one.”
Michael Kahn to assume his duties as ARC Associate Director Jan. 1
Michael Kahn, who holds a joint appointment as a professor in the Institute of Biological Chemistry and the School of Molecular Biosciences, has been named associate director of Washington State University’s Agricultural Research Center.
He will partner with the director of the ARC to administer, lead, and report on research programs in the College of Agricultural, Human, and Natural Resource Sciences and Agricultural Research Center activities of other affiliated college.
Kahn, who has been with WSU for 28 years, has served as associate director of WSU’s Institute of Biological Chemistry since 1996. The Santa Fe, N.M., native earned a doctorate in biophysics from Stanford University and his bachelor’s degree in physics from the California Institute of Technology.
The Agricultural Research Center was created in 1891 as the Washington State Agricultural Experiment Station, It was formed under the provisions of the Hatch Act of 1887 to diffuse practical agricultural knowledge among the public through the state colleges. In Fiscal Year 2005-06, the center administered more than 300 research projects underwritten by $58.8 million in grants and appropriated funding.
Protecting Poplars from a New Pest
When major producers of hybrid poplars in the Pacific
Northwest sought help from Washington State University
in 2000 to protect their nearly decade-old stands from
pests, entomologists John Brown and Doug Walsh started
by targeting the usual suspects.
They assumed their research on applying integrated
pest management techniques would focus on traditional
poplar pests such as the poplar willow borer and the cottonwood
leaf beetle.
But in 2002, a new pest emerged as a threat to the poplar
stands: the western poplar clearwing moth.
“In 2001, our pheromone-baited traps captured 95
western poplar clearwing moths in a four-week period,”
Brown said. “During the same four-week period in 2002,
we found more than 18,000 moths in traps placed at the
same locations. It clearly was an outbreak.”
According to Brown, the moth larvae burrow through
the trees’ cambium layer and into the heartwood, leaving
them prone to breakage and blow over, and unusable for
saw timber. The pests will girdle the bark on small, newly
planted trees, killing them.
With more than 36,000 acres of irrigated poplar at risk
in eastern Washington and Oregon—much of it nearing
maturity for use as saw timber—the potential economic
impact to producers like Potlatch Corp., Boise-Cascade,
and Green Wood Resources were substantial.
In an attempt to stem the outbreak in 2002, the
producers applied 44,000 pounds of an organophosphate
pesticide, Lorsban ®, to no avail. Other contact pesticides
applied to control other pests had no effect on
the clearwing moth.
To complicate matters, major saw timber retailers, such
as Home Depot and Lowe’s, are committed to buying
lumber from producers that manage their timber under
Forest Stewardship Council guidelines that severely restrict
pesticide use. An effective alternative was needed--and
quickly.
Brown and Walsh and their integrated pest management
(IPM) team recruited Jocelyn Millar at the University of
California at Riverside to join them. Years earlier, he had
isolated the clearwing moth’s sex pheromone that the
team had used in its traps. The pheromone attracts and
confuses male moths, thus disrupting their mating cycle.
With only a limited supply of the synthetic pheromone
available, and approval required by the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency of a Regional Section 18 permit for
use of an unregistered pesticide, only one-third of the
poplar plantings was treated in 2003.
“We saw some tangible results, and we were able to refine
the formulation and application for future years,” Brown
said. “We obtained another Section 18 (permit) in 2004
to apply (the synthetic pheromone) to all the stands,
which resulted in a significant reduction in clearwing
moth damage.”
In 2006, the EPA granted full approval for use of the new
pesticide to control the western poplar clearwing moth.
The success of the pheromone-based IPM strategy has
meant that Lorsban has not been applied on Pacific
Northwest hybrid poplar plantations since 2002.
“That’s a 44,000-pound reduction in organophosphate
use,” Brown said. “The synthetic pheromone is nontoxic,
so workers can re-enter the forest only a few hours after
application, and it takes as little as one gram per acre per
year to be effective.”
The project’s success resulted in the Entomological Society
of America’s awarding to the Pacific Northwest Hybrid
Poplar IPM Team both its regional and its national Dow
AgroScience’s Integrated Pest Management Team awards.
Heading using the h3tag
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