|
My fault, I didn't realize the link would require you to open an account with the NY Times. I have pasted the article here, sorry for the length.
Millions of Plants Caught in Dragnet for Oak Killer
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."
One point of consensus among experts is that the epithet
"sudden oak death" is misleading. The disease can linger
for months and does not always cause death. It is not known
to affect all oak species.
Until last winter Dennis Connor had little reason to think
that the disease would turn up in his nursery, Monrovia
Growers, in Azusa, Calif., one of the country's largest
purveyors of garden plants.
The disease thrives mainly in wetter northern parts of the
state, where it has caused thousands of trees to bleed an
ugly dark sap and die seemingly within weeks. The nursery
sits nearly in the desert outside Los Angeles. Sudden oak
death "didn't seem to exist in dry areas," said Mr. Connor,
the general manager of Monrovia Growers.
But on March 8, California state agriculture inspectors
found P. ramorum on six kinds of Monrovia's camellia
plants. The company had just shipped 158,000 camellias to
900 retail garden centers in the United States and Canada.
The plants had to be tracked down to stop their sale and
planting. Monrovia had to destroy 1.3 million camellia
plants, which took about four months, because
hazardous-waste handlers could take only so many at a time.
"We basically ended up dumping our camellia crop," Mr.
Connor said.
He estimated that the company had lost at least $9 million
in destroyed plants, sales lost in states that banned
shipments and reimbursements for infected shipments.
Since April the Agriculture Department's inspection service
has spent $15.5 million to test nurseries for signs of the
disease. For 2005 the inspection service has requested
about $3 million to continue its control efforts.
Dr. Rizzo of the University of California said he marveled
at the sheer breadth of the new rules. "This is the widest
host range ever to be quarantined," Dr. Rizzo said. "We're
up to over 60 different species. Given the fact that this
involves so many hosts, can we really stop this?"
__________________
Assumption is life's lowest form of knowledge.
|
Similar Threads
