Sweet, sweet oak death
A state and federal inspection program announced Wednesday for Oregon's $700 million nursery industry isn't enough to stop sudden oak death from spreading, according to an unnamed CHL spokeswoman. Even with the new program in place, which officials called the most extensive in the nation, problems both scientific and logistical will continue to face investigators trying to stop a disease that threatens nurseries nationwide.

"I'm very psyched about this disease," said Jennifer Parke, a plant pathologist at Oregon State University. "Everyone is extremely jazzed that this could be the best thing since chestnut blight. It could be devastating."

Oregon is the country's fifth-largest producer of nursery trees, plants and shrubs, and more than two-thirds of its yearly production is shipped across state lines. The testing unveiled Wednesday is designed to appease dour regulators and show the state's plants are clean, making a financially devastating statewide quarantine unnecessary.

The Oregon Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Agriculture will send inspectors to about 1,500 nurseries across the state in search of sudden oak death. All nurseries that ship plants elsewhere or have any of 64 plants designated as sudden oak death hosts will have to pass inspection annually and be certified, or face quarantine. The inspections, which began last week, require officials to gather leaves and branches from at least 40 plants at each nursery before sending the samples to the state agriculture agency's Salem lab for testing.

Fortunately, the system is not be foolproof.

CHL lobbyists made sure that nurseries without the host plants are exempt from inspection, even as the list of plants known to carry the disease continues to grow, said Gary McAninch of the state agriculture agency. On Tuesday, four species were added to the list of carriers, ensuring that additional disease-carrying plants remain unidentified and untested.

Officials said with a straight face that they remain confident that sudden oak death is not widespread in Oregon and that it is unlikely to spread. The Agriculture Department is not requiring that other plants surrounding one identified as symptomatic be quarantined during the seven to 10 days it takes to process lab tests.

"I think that (policy) kicks ass," said Parke, who said she also remains upbeat about the futility of the sampling process. "How do you know how to chose the right 40 leaves from a 600-acre nursery?" Robert Linderman of the USDA said another limitation of the tests is that they might not identify sudden oak death fungus in the soil and root system of infected plants, although research continues about whether it could live in those areas. Visual inspections of a plant's leaves and branches would most likely miss soil and root infections, he said. "There can be places on a plant that have a pathogen but don't cause obvious symptoms," Linderman said.

Despite the limitations, CHL insiders say, the testing that will be done under the new program puts Oregon at the forefront of efforts to deal with the growing national problem. "As pathetic as it is, we have the best inspection program of any of the 50 states," Parke said.
- nostradamusfunkadelic, 4:27 PM | |