From: "MJ Hatfield" mjhatfield at oneota.org> on 2005.01.11 at 00:01:50(12572)
Susan,
Here is an update on what the government is doing concerning
plants and Sudden Oak Death.
MJ
December
23, 2004
By
BRADFORD McKEE
JUST
in time to complicate spring planting, the federal government is preparing to
issue what agriculture officials call the most sweeping restrictions on the
shipment of nursery plants ever undertaken in the United States, to try to prevent
the spread of a virulent disease that has killed tens of thousands of oaks and
other species along the West Coast.
The
restrictions, expected to be issued in early January,
will
affect millions of plants grown in California, Oregon
and
Washington, about one-third of the country's nursery
plant
supply. They will require inspection, sampling and possibly testing of all
plants that could be hosts to the pathogen, Phytophthora ramorum, the cause of
sudden oak death syndrome, before shipment across state lines. The disease has
been spotted in 22 states.
The
list of likely host plants has grown to include 64
species,
among them popular ornamental plants like
camellias,
rhododendrons and azaleas. Agriculture officials caution that the list could
grow as the range of host plants becomes better known.
The
disease, caused by a poorly understood organism,
ravages
oaks and tanoaks. In other species, including bay laurel and andromeda, it
causes leaf spots and dying twigs. Discoveries of the disease in the nursery
trade have been isolated and few, but the potential impact of its spread leaves
regulators little room for error.
"This
is as big a plant regulatory emergency as I've ever experienced," said Dan
Hilburn, the administrator of the plant division of the Oregon agriculture
department. Nursery plants are Oregon's No. 1 agricultural product, and about 76
percent of them, about $589 million worth, are sold out of state. Mr. Hilburn
compared the government's concern to that following the arrival of the gypsy
moth and Japanese beetle in North America, problems that
appeared in the early 1900's and lingered for most of the century.
"It's
a megapest, as big as they get," Mr. Hilburn said.
Industry
experts said that customers of retail garden
centers
could face shortages of some common garden plants
for
the spring planting season, especially if symptoms of
the
disease are found during the nursery inspections.
Growers
would have to stop major shipments if inspectors
find
signs of P. ramorum infection on their properties.
Testing
for the disease can take weeks to months for a confident result.
John
Aguirre, the executive director of the Oregon
Association
of Nurseries, said that more than 50 percent of Oregon's nurseries would
have to be inspected under the order. California ships about 20
percent of its nursery plants out of state. "If you lose the ability to
get plant material from California and Oregon, it's going to be
felt without question by the consumer," Mr. Aguirre said.
Nurseries
in general have not yet raised prices on plants because of P. ramorum problems,
but nursery owners cannot rule out price rises if supplies for particular
plants become scarce. "With the most susceptible plants there could be a
shortage, with rhododendrons and camellias especially," said Dave Fujino,
the vice president of Hines Horticulture, one of the country's largest
wholesale nurseries, in Winters, Calif. "I'm not hearing anything about an
escalation of prices, but I'm not hearing there's a shortage" of
particular plants, he said.
In
September, inspectors found P. ramorum symptoms on rhododendrons at a Hines
nursery in Forest Grove, Ore., which prompted regulators to track down
10,000 rhododendrons that had been shipped to about 50 locations in Connecticut.
Agriculture
officials say they hope the new rules will
prevent
the sort of widespread disruptions of plant
shipments
that began last spring when the disease was found
on
camellias in a large California nursery, though the
officials cannot guarantee against future disruptions.
Retail
garden centers typically place orders for spring a
year
in advance. Consumers were largely unaware of last spring's disruptions because
most of the potentially infected plants found were confiscated and destroyed
before they were sold. With thousands of plants held up in California, retailers
scrambled to substitute plants grown elsewhere.
Bob
Jacobson, a senior director of Home Depot in Atlanta,
said
his company faced some plant shortages last spring, especially in the Atlanta area, but was able
to use other suppliers. "In all honesty, it was a pain in the neck,"
Mr. Jacobson said.
Owners
of smaller garden centers are watching the situation warily. James Harwell, the
president of Harwell's Green Thumb in Montgomery, Ala., said he feared the
impact of a quarantine. "In springtime they could shut down a whole
nursery."
At
first the federal government took steps to prevent the spread of the disease
from affected plants in California, where it has
devastated entire forests. But four states imposed wider bans unless the
nurseries could certify that their plants were disease-free. Thomas Johnson,
the plant pest administrator in Alabama, said he had
imposed a ban broader than the federal government's to protect Alabama's diverse plant
life and its nursery industry, the state's second biggest agricultural
commodity, after poultry.
"We
have a lot of plants in the East that they don't have
in
the West," Mr. Johnson said.
Nursery
owners and agriculture officials said they hoped
the
new rules would reduce the confusion caused by state
bans
against plants from California nurseries, some of
which
exceeded the federal inspection order. Little is
known
about the pathogen's behavior outside the mild foggy forests of the West. As a
precaution, however, plants thought to be infected are handled as if they were
hazardous waste.
California nursery growers
estimate that the bans will
result
in sales losses of at least $50 million this year. Claude R. Knighten, a
spokesman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in the federal
Agriculture Department, called the new restrictions "one of the most
comprehensive and challenging plant health programs undertaken by our agency in
recent years." He said the rules, to be issued under the Plant Protection
Act, were awaiting a final legal review by the department.
Most
upsetting to regulators and scientists is how little
they
understand P. ramorum. It is one of about 100 species
of
Phytophthora, Greek for "plant destroyer" and commonly
known
as root rot or crown rot. The first symptoms were
found
withering a tanoak in Mill Valley, Calif., in 1995.
In
2000 P. ramorum was isolated and identified by Dr. David Rizzo, a professor of
plant pathology at the University of California, Davis, and Dr. Matteo Garbelotto
at the University of California, Berkeley.
"We're
just getting started," Dr. Rizzo said. "This is an organism nobody
knew existed four years ago."
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