Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

The annual meeting was held September 20 to September 22, 2010 at The Grove Hotel in Boise, Idaho and hosted by local chair and organizer, Alexander Karasev, University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho.

To view the full minutes and the state reports, click on the link below for the minutes attachment.

The meeting convened at 09:00 on September 20, 2010:

Karasev (local Chair) and Cavalieri (Administrative Advisor) provided welcoming remarks. Moya Shatz, Executive Director, Idaho Wine Commission introduced the Idaho wine industry and its increasing impact to the states economy. Individual state/province reports were presented from California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Michigan, Hawaii, British Columbia, California (citrus), South Carolina, Mississippi and Colorado. Reports were also presented from USDA-APHIS-PPQ and USDA-ARS scientists in Beltsville, MD.

Business meeting:

Cavalieri indicated WERA-20 must submit a project revision for renewal to ARC by January 15, 2011. Ken Eastwell and Naidu Rayapati volunteered to coordinate the revision. Reports and publication lists since 2007 must be sent to Eastwell by December 15, 2010.

Chair Karasev suggested the next WERA-20 meeting be held at Oregon State University in Corvallis. The group unanimously agreed. Robert Martin and Joseph Postman agreed to be co-chairs of the meeting and will decide on dates. It was also decided to hold the following meeting in the southeast in or before May, 2012; Simon Scott at Clemson University will explore the possibility.

A discussion of the National Clean Plant Network followed. Postman provided a summary of past funding and current status of NCPN funding. As of September 2010, networks for fruit trees, grapevines, hops, berries and citrus have been created and funded. Networks for figs, olive, potatoes and sweet potatoes are being considered. The Tier 2 specialty crop boards from berries, citrus, hops, grapevines and fruit trees were represented at the meeting and discussed some of the challenges of the future funding were discussed.

WERA-020 is regarded as an important group with closely allied interests to provide information and a focal point for developing much of the data required for NCPN operations. Examples are the assistance in locating voucher samples of many diseases in disease collections and in identifying pathogens of regional concern for consideration by the NCPN. Parallel missions of WERA-020 and the NCPN should lead to closer association.

Formal meeting adjourned. Field tours of facilities in southern Idaho were conducted on September 21 and September 22. To view the full minutes and the state reports, click on the link below.

1. Collaborations built through WERA-20 led to the development and funding of a Specialty Crops Research Initiative grant to study the epidemiology of the viruses involved in yellow vein disease, crumbly fruit and decline of blackberry. The grant involves institutions from Arkansas, Oregon, North Carolina, California and Mississippi. A new virus genus was discovered and it was found throughout the Southeast in both wild and cultivated blackberries.

2. A collaborative project involving USDA-ARS, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington resulted in the development of a more reliable and practical molecular assay for tomato ringspot virus, a serious virus of fruit trees and grapevines in many production areas of the U.S.

3. Information exchange between institutions has improved the availability of germplasm for fruit tree breeding programs and commercial cultivars for production. This is the direct result of improved testing methods and operations management. The USDA-APHIS-PPQ facility in Maryland released 269 accessions from foreign sources in 2010, up from just 39 in 2007. The university program in Washington acquired 100 new accessions in 2010, 28% of which were virus infected. These included material from USDA breeding programs (28), from foreign sources (47) and proprietary clones from domestic sponsors (23). In addition to acquiring new accessions, 5,773 virus-tested buds were distributed from the Washington site to nurseries, growers, researchers and quarantine programs.

Al Rwahnih M, Daubert S, Golino D, Rowhani A. 2009. Deep sequencing analysis of RNAs from a grapevine showing Syrah decline symptoms reveals a multiple virus infection that includes a novel virus. Virology 387, 395-401.

Alabi OJ, Martin RR, Naidu RA. 2010. Sequence diversity, population genetics and potential recombination events in Grapevine rupestris stem pitting-associated virus in Pacific Northwest Vineyards. Journal of General Virology 91:265-276.

Crosslin JM, Eastwell KC, Davitt CM, Abad JA. 2010. First report of seedborne Cherry leaf roll virus in wild potato, Solanum acaule, from South America. Plant Disease 94:782-783.

Eastwell KC, Howell WE. 2010. Characterization of Cherry leaf roll virus in sweet cherry in Washington State. Plant Disease 94:1067.

Gutha LR, Casassa LF, Harbertson JF, Naidu RA. 2010. Modulation of flavonoid biosynthetic pathway genes and anthocyanins due to virus infection in grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) leaves. BMC Plant Biology 2010, 10:187

Hajeri S, Ramadugu C, Keremane M, Vidalakis G, Lee R. 2010. Nucleotide Sequence and Genome Organization of Dweet mottle virus and Its Relationship to Members of the Family Betaflexiviridae. Archives of Virology. 155, 1523-1527.

Jarugula S, Alabi OJ, Martin RR, Naidu RA. 2010. Genetic variability of natural populations of Grapevine leafroll-associated virus-2 in Pacific Northwest vineyards. Phytopathology 100:698-707.

Jarugula S, Gowda S, Dawson WO, Naidu RA. 2010. 3'-coterminal subgenomic RNAs and putative cis-acting elements of Grapevine leafroll-associated virus 3 reveals 'unique' features of gene expression strategy in the genus Ampelovirus. Virology Journal 2010. 7:180.

Martin RR, Zhou J, TzanetakisIE. 2010. Blueberry latent virus: An amalgam of the Partitiviridae and the Totiviridae. Virus Research, doi:10.1016/j.virusres.2010.09.020

Mekuria TA, Naidu RA. 2010. First report of grapevine virus sequences highly similar to Grapevine Syrah virus-1 from Washington vineyards Plant Disease, 94: 787.

Naidu RA, Mekuria TA. 2010. First report of Grapevine fleck virus from Washington vineyards. Plant Disease 94:84.

Riga E, Larsen R, Eastwell KC, Guerra N, Guerra L, Crosslin JM. 2009. Rapid detection of Tobacco rattle tobravirus in viruliferous Paratrichodorus allius from greenhouse and field specimens. Journal of Nematology 41:60-63.

Tzanetakis IE, Guzmán-Baeny TL, VanEsbroeck ZP, Fernandez GE, Martin RR. 2009. First report of Impatiens necrotic spot virus in blackberry Southeastern United States. Plant Disease 93:432.

Tzanetakis IE, Laney AG, Keller KE, Martin RR. 2010. New viruses found in fig exhibiting mosaic symptoms. Julius-Kühn-Archiv 427:79-82.

Tzanetakis IE, Martin RR, Scott SW. 2010. .Genomic sequences of blackberry chlorotic ringspot virus and strawberry necrotic shock virus and the phylogeny of viruses in subgroup 1 of the genus Ilarvirus. Archives of Virology 155:557-561.

Vidalakis G, Pagliaccia D, Bash JA, Semancik JS. 2010. Effects of mixtures of citrus viroids as Transmissible small nuclear RNA (TsnRNA) on tree dwarfing and commercial scion performance on Carrizo citrange rootstock. Annals of Applied Biology.157, 415-423.