Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

8:00 AM Welcome, introductions, approve last year's minutes -Jim Marois and Bob Kemerait -The meeting was called to order with some brief comments from Jim Marois at 8:02 AM. 8:15-8:45 Update from NCSRP and USB -David Wright and Richard Joost -Comments from David Wright, NCSRP meeting in St. Louis the very next week regarding grant funding (roughly December 6) and will be looking at the situation critically to determine what projects will make the greatest impact for soybean growers. The sentinel plot proposal is on the table and David will let us know regarding the funding situation for sentinel plots at some point next week following that meeting. The rest of the funding will occur at the Commodity Classic in Tampa, FL in March. NCSRP could decide to fund the program or not fund it and this will then be forwarded to the USB. Clayton Hollier asked David whether or not he had a feeling for the direction that the NCSRP group might vote. David indicated that the board was more or less split regarding sentinel plot funding. -Rich Joost updated the group regarding the USB situation. He thanked David Wright and the NCSRP for stepping to the plate and funding the sentinel plot situation at a time when funding situation was bleak. However, there is some concern regarding the lack of soybean rust pressure and where we go for the future. In 2010 we seem to have had the reverse perfect storm that meant the disease wouldnt develop following a cold winter and a hot summer. The sentinel plot program has benefited most states in providing an awareness of diseases in soybean even if it didnt do much with regards to soybean rust. Plain and simple, growers have benefited from the program by limiting or reducing the need for a fungicide application based on the presence of disease. From a funding perspective, the USB is in excellent shape for monies following excellent yields as well as high commodity prices. He did indicate that the USB needed to find good projects to fund. The USB board meeting is next week, December 6, and there will be a new committee, elections will take place and committees will be appointed from there following those elections. Funding decisions wont be made until February so the sentinel plot proposal will be discussed at that point and theyll receive the proposal regardless of the decision thats made by the NCSRP. At present there are only two times of the year that the USB accepts proposals&..they will accept the proposals all year but they only meet twice a year to make those decisions. There are presently two different areas that proposals can be submitted either Production or Composition and most everything will fit under these two headings. Steve Slack asked a question regarding the information return from the NCERA208 meeting for the USBs needs. David Wright commented that this is the first year the NCSRP board has had the proposal in hand prior to the NCERA208 meeting. The NCSRP and USB arent taking away any hard document from this particular meeting but the thoughts from the meeting will certainly be synthesized and returned to the two organizations in support of the group. USBs committee meeting will be 3 hours and theyll have a minimum of three new committee members. Ed Sikora had asked why he wasnt invited back to give a presentation at the NCSRP board meeting in St. Louis and David indicated that he was giving the opportunity to people that had not been to make a presentation in support of their proposal. The NCSRP is aware of the sentinel plot project and it has been around for a few years already. -Jim Marois commented and thanked both the NCSRP and USB boards and their representatives at the meeting for doing such a wonderful job with the smooth procedure of the sentinel plot situation. -Marty Draper had called yesterday and sent some information to Jim regarding RMA and the fact that RMA is interested in a continued sentinel plot program if we can develop a methodology that shows that there has been a reduced risk to the insurance situation revolving around soybean and soybean rust infection. We will need to find an economist to help with this to generate some numbers. A particular economist was suggested by Marty Draper and Steve Slack, who is at VPI (Virginia Tech). If he is not available then some other names need to be generated. A committee will need to be generated by this afternoon to go back to Marty for a conference call with Kitty Cardwell. This is something that has already been moving forward and there is quite a bit of urgency regarding the situation. Marty had provided 4 or 5 specific questions and categories to consider. Don Hershman commented that in August there was a seed grant meeting to look at ways to different approaches regarding the use of sentinel plots and the use of an economic based model. An economist helped that group, Terry Hurley from U. of Minnesota and it is possible he can help out with this process. 8:45-9:15 Observations and thoughts from 2010 -Tom Allen -The 2010 year was completely different from the 2009 season. Less rust was detected throughout the nation and there were in fact massive reductions in the overall number of states that detected soybean rust from 2009 (17 states) to 2010 (7 states). In addition, 580 counties had positive rust detections during the 2009 season as compared to just 43 total positive counties during the 2010 season. In addition, even though federal funding ended a few years ago and with the situation being funded by NCSRP for the 2010 season there were still some states that had the ability to gain additional funding dollars through other organizations but particularly from local soybean promotion boards. Of the 9 NCSRP states that were funded (AL, AR, FL, GA, LA, MS, OK, SC, TX) for 2010 soybean rust monitoring, 5 of those states were able to gain dollars over and above what was provided to them by the NCSRP. Comments from the survey that was circulated to pathology specialists from each state with regards to soybean rust monitoring were discussed to present the differences between previous years as well as the overall challenge that has been met. Even with reduced funding we are still seeing outstanding efforts from states that did not receive funding where they are still able to color counties on the national map and provide producers in their state with the sense of security that they have had since 2004/2005 when the disease was initially detected in the U.S. Although in some states sentinel plots are not being planted or the only thing relied on for the detection of soybean rust a large increase in the use of mobile scouted plots has occurred throughout the U.S. and is providing excellent information. Comments as well as maps were presented with regards to the detection of soybean rust in Walthall County, MS. In the past, the disease has been detected in other counties in the southern part of MS. In 2010, the disease was detected in Walthall County for the first time in late September. Scott Isard was contacted to see if he could provide information with regards to the particular weather patterns that might have influenced the infection of soybean in this county. Scott provided two maps for the presentation on the weather patterns that occurred on August 13 and 14, 2010 when heavy rainfall had occurred in this particular county and the vicinity. Mean wind currents and the overall prevailing winds suggest that the most likely location of origin was on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. During 2010 rust had not been detected in this part of Mexico; however, over the past few years Mexico had positively identified soybean rust from this part of the country. This information was based on maps showing the mean air currents as well as the local rainfall that had occurred on the above dates. Field calls in the area also reported that there was severe peanut rust present in peanut fields within the same county. This added to the interesting scenario and allowed Scott to back track things since that would mean it likely came from a more unique area since wind currents didnt blow the spores for peanut rust in from AL, FL, GA, LA, or TX based on the general geographic locations where peanut production occurs in each of those states. The last slide presented information regarding the regional hotline that provides information for AR, LA, and MS regarding the presence of soybean rust within the region. The figure presented data from the hotline overlaid on the total number of positive counties from around the nation. -Melvin Newman commented on the resistant frogeye fungus population from western TN. Was Asgrow 4703 that was infected, whole plant samples were brought to Melvin and he knew there was a problem after the field was sprayed with two 6 oz applications of a strobilurin fungicide. Plants following the fungicide applications were still heavily infected with frogeye. Limited fungicide use was implemented in this farmers field prior to 2009 and 2010. NCERA 208 Multi-state activity update and renewal process -Steve Slack and Jim Marois -Steve Slack started the comments at the Federal level regarding the soybean rust situation. Most states are financially struggling with regards to the budget. Steve had spoken with Marty Draper who wanted us all to be aware of the situation. Steve also handed around the updated Appendix E from the updated NCERA208 to make sure that everyone had updated their information. Steve mentioned that if you were not on the list you had to speak to your experiment station director to have that taken care of. The Appendix E is significant since the whole project is being rewritten. Minutes for this meeting are due by the end of January, so if they can be submitted by the middle of January that would be much more helpful. How we have documented the work that we have done over the past 5-6 years is an important part of the renewal process. Some of the information that we have generated as a group needs to make its way into the public domain. -Jim gave an update on the process for renewal of NCERA208. The proposal is due December 15. The proposal was a 5 year time limit and the first one will end September 30, 2011. The renewal was submitted by the December 1 deadline and we have done that so that we can continue to update and change anything if we need to do that. Jim did indicate that the group has not seen the renewal package (as a group) for quite some time. The consensus of the group was to NOT merge the 208 with another group and was to continue its own entity and not merge with NCERA212. With that in mind, Steve Slack has essentially suggested that we are not fully capitalizing on what the group has conducted and created. -Essentially we need to revamp the objectives. -Don Hershman made some comments that followed Doug Jardines regarding the fact that there are several very different AUDPC curves for soybean rust. What is normal -Albert suggested to change the objectives: -Currently, the objectives are: 1. Continue to provide leadership for the implementation of an efficient, coordinated soybean rust monitoring system in the U.S. 2. Collaborate with scientists in Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean to encourage soybean rust monitoring and reporting outside of the U.S. 3. Indentify and evaluate the best disease management strategies for soybean rust in the U.S. including host resistance, fungicide application, cultural measures and predictive models based on sound epidemiological research. 4. Meet annually to exchange and share research data among the land grant participants, industry and commodity leaders. 5. Continue to support and develop educational materials for the identification and management of soybean rust in the U.S. 6. Collaborate with the APS, USDA, ipmPIPE, regional IPM Centers, and regional/national check-off boards on soybean rust educational programs and initiatives. -A milestone achievement of the group has been the creation of the system that has been considered by other disease systems (the ipmPIPE revolved around soybean rust and other disease systems have now been added to the situation on the website). Insert some note regarding the complete or full implementation of the system by ------ (date). We can say something along the lines that the system has been proven to be flexible and could be adopted by another disease system (i.e. Ug99, frogeye leaf spot of soybean). -What, if any, are our milestones for 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, we dont need to focus on the work that weve done in the past but we need to talk about what the group is going to accomplish in the future? -A milestone could be that we will have a fungicide resistance monitoring system in place by 2014 and expand this to the population biology perspective. In particular the use of the spore germination methodology to carefully and properly consider if resistance to the major class of fungicides has occurred within the U.S. -Also, there was a comment regarding a new class of fungicide chemistries. With this to occur in the future then the work regarding spray technologies, timings, nozzle type, and other spray technologies would all need to be done again for soybean rust. -What about the possibility of creating a milestone (or objective, and likely in with the first objective) to expand beyond just weather to include climate to potentially look at the chances of predicting what the year would have for a soybean rust epidemic. -Rich Joost asked who we are thinking could be a long-term, permanent source of funding? -A 2016 milestone would be creating some sort of a review paper or a white paper to talk about all of the accomplishments of the group. A potential Annual Review manuscript, a feature article, a white paper (Marty had started to work on this a few years ago but due to the reduction in funding as well as a few other situations this fell by the wayside&&this could be reinitiated?) -Ray did indicate that the risk to Midwest has yet to be realized and we dont have any method of knowing when that will occur. -A milestone needs to also be included that we can say that we have effectively disproved the notion that we were going to have MASSIVE yield losses. Don had indicated that one of the original documents from 2004 had suggested we could lose $3 billion once the fungus got to this country. As Clayton suggested because we have had to make some fungicide applications that we have limited the amount of inoculum that could in fact have lead to an epidemic at some location. This is a good point to make and frankly we need to remember that we didnt even have a Section 18 for a single product for soybean rust at the time the fungus arrived in the U.S. in November 2004. -Kudzu diversity (or diversity of alternative hosts), inoculum survival, overwintering of inoculum  place this under Objective 3 -Comments were made by Don Hershman, Clayton Hollier, Jim Marois, Ray Schneider, Albert Tenuta, John Rupe -Conversation regarding the information/questions that Marty Draper had submitted to Jim Marois regarding the benefits to the crop insurance agency (RMA) of the soybean rust monitoring network. -Specific email from Marty Draper regarding an RMA proposal was discussed/presented. Question 1. In those years where there were a lot of red counties then there were a lot of fungicides applied versus those years when there were more green counties? YES, we have the information to do this by looking at web site statistics, hotline call data (AR, LA, MS hotline information), and possible the fungicide sales data from Doanes if we could get a hold of that (potentially Marty Wiglesworth???) or maybe call them and see if they would be willing to give us that information just on soybean sales. Question 2. YES, we can answer that question. Essentially, if you didnt have the ipmPIPE then rust could have been a problem that would have increased the overall number of insurance pay outs (while this is a simplistic approach it may work to answer this question in the end) Question 3. Can link the surveys that we conduct as specialists with the website hits to look at the overall number of acres sprayed. -Scott suggested we build a specific questionnaire and send it to ourselves, fill it out, compile it, and present that information to them as an expert opinion. Then include the specific data that we have on each of those situations and present all of it to RMA. -It is possible we could look at the yield loss in trials and suggest that without recommendations on the specific use of fungicides then we could have potentially lost XXX amount of dollars. -Ed, we can go back to those states that have recommended a fungicide when rust did show up and look at specific dates with regards to how timely the fungicide suggestion was made. Surveys can be considered to look at the percent acreage that was sprayed for soybean rust. -Can we make a case for how rapidly the disease can occur and how difficult it is to detect at low levels and suggest that we timely provide information through the ipmPIPE and if we didnt have that feature (the PIPE) that producers would essentially be blind because they werent making timely applications of a fungicide thus it isnt at the correct timing and they could essentially be losing yield and have to make a claim. Question 4. Question 5. To not be creating a super bug. If we arent putting fungicides out there then we arent exposing the inoculum to the overall fungicide chemistries. -not killing non-target beneficial -not dumping unnecessary products into the environment -off target use that impacts fish  triazoles impact fish and are toxic to some species of fish it is possible that a fungicide could be applied to a fish farm and cause a severe loss at a fish farm (fish would be covered under the same type of insurance system) -We need to think about this from the perspective of what sort of losses would we have if the disease were to occur in the Midwest. -The committee is Scott Isard, Jim Marois, Don Hershman, Tom Allen, Albert Tenuta to create a proposal and initially build a survey to go to the southern states and move forward 2010 and future direction based on previous days discussion -Jim Marois -Kiersten Wise has agreed to serve as secretary for NCERA208 for the 2011 meeting and will then serve as president of the group. -The timing and location of the next meeting. Ray would be happy to host the meeting in Baton Rouge, LA for 2011. 2011 will be the last year for the first 5-year of the 208 meeting. The potential of having the meeting in conjunction with SSDW in Pensacola Beach, FL that would fall sometime in March 2012 was suggested. Don H. suggests that we not meet in conjunction with SSDW since we dont know if the 212 group will decide to meet with SSDW in the future following the meeting in 2011. Loren suggested we shoot for an earlier time, September or October. The group has a fairly good consensus regarding a meeting in October in Baton Rouge, LA. Ray will do the local arrangements. As of right now there are games scheduled on October 1, 8, 22 in Baton Rouge so those weekends are out. Ray asked if the group maybe wanted to move the meeting to a more northern state in the future for a future meeting site. The potential opportunity for having the meeting in a different location would have to come after the 2011 meeting which has essentially already been located in Baton Rouge barring any change in the situation but information will follow regarding this situation. Ray will work on getting the information from the hotel as soon as possible. -The meeting was adjourned by Jim Marois at 11:30 AM! Complete minutes with additional discussions and reports are in the attached full set of minutes.

-A milestone achievement of the group has been the creation of the system that has been considered by other disease systems (the ipmPIPE revolved around soybean rust and other disease systems have now been added to the situation on the website). The system has been proven to be flexible and could be adopted by another disease system (i.e. Ug99, frogeye leaf spot of soybean). -A milestone could be that we will have a fungicide resistance monitoring system in place by 2014 and expand this to the population biology perspective. In particular the use of the spore germination methodology to carefully and properly consider if resistance to the major class of fungicides has occurred within the U.S. -Also, there was a comment regarding a new class of fungicide chemistries. With this to occur in the future then the work regarding spray technologies, timings, nozzle type, and other spray technologies would all need to be done again for soybean rust. -What about the possibility of creating a milestone (or objective, and likely in with the first objective) to expand beyond just weather to include climate to potentially look at the chances of predicting what the year would have for a soybean rust epidemic. -A 2016 milestone would be creating some sort of a review paper or a white paper to talk about all of the accomplishments of the group. A potential Annual Review manuscript, a feature article, a white paper -Ray did indicate that the risk to Midwest has yet to be realized and we dont have any method of knowing when that will occur. -The milestone we have effectively disproved the notion that we were going to have MASSIVE yield losses. Don had indicated that one of the original documents from 2004 had suggested we could lose $3 billion once the fungus got to this country. As Clayton suggested because we have had to make some fungicide applications that we have limited the amount of inoculum that could in fact have lead to an epidemic at some location. This is a good point to make and frankly we need to remember that we didnt even have a Section 18 for a single product for soybean rust at the time the fungus arrived in the U.S. in November 2004.