Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

NCERA-213 Annual Meeting October 4-5, 2012 Bahia Mar Hotel, Fort Lauderdale, Florida Meeting Minutes Officers: David G. Schmale III-Virginia Tech-dschmale@vt.edu Jeff Bradshaw-University of Nebraska-Lincoln-jbradshaw2@unl.edu Marcos Algara-Siller-Universidad Autonoma de San Luis Potosi Andy Michel-The Ohio State University-michael.70@osu.edu October 4 Attendance: David Schmale-Virginia Tech-dschmale@vt.edu Jeff Bradshaw- University of Nebraska-Lincoln-jbradshaw2@unl.edu Marcos Algara-Siller (via Skype)-Universidad Autonoma de San Luis Potosi Andy Michel-The Ohio State University-michael.70@osu.edu Rob Meagher-USDA/ARS-rob.meagher@ars.usda.gov Elson Shields-Cornell University-es28@cornell.edu Scott Isard-Penn State-sai10@psu.edu Rod Nagoshi-USDA/ARS-rodney.nagoshi@ars.usda.gov Tim Gottwald-USDA/ARS-tim.gottwald@ars.usda.gov John Westbrook-USDA/ARS-john.westbrook@ars.usda.gov Bill Ravlin-The Ohio State University-ravlin.1@osu.edu Eric Valdez-USGS/Albuquerque NM-evaldez@usgs.gov Pierre Amato-Institut de Chimie de Clermont Ferrand (ICCF) France- Shane Ross-Virginia Tech-sdross@vt.edu Dale Griffin-USGS/Tallahassee FL-dgriffin@usgs.gov Jacob Wenger-The Ohio State University-wenger.93@osu.edu Rob Stoll-University of Utah-rstoll@eng.utah.edu Shelby Fleisher-Penn State-sjf4@psu.edu Welcome remarks. David Schmale made some opening comments. Thanks to Rob Meagher for serving as local arrangements. Thanks to Jeff, Andy, and Marcos for helping to develop the programs. Introductions were made around the room. Official business Ad hoc nomination committee formed for nomination of Secretary-Treasurer: Jeff Bradshaw, David Schmale Administrative Advisors report (Bill Ravlin) Mentioned that he will follow up on finding our new NIFA representative for NCERA-213. Sonny Ramaswami is our new NIFA director. Sonny indicated that he would like to reinstate the Foundation Programs. Sonny would like to increase the number of multistate funding programs. No USDA budget yet& Sequestration will kick in potentially and that will take an additional 8% from NIFA programs. The IPM dollars will go through a lot of consolidation to lock-in larger pools of money to make these dollars less susceptible to further congressional reductions. Foundational RFA is ready to go, but it is waiting on congress. Discussion: What is the future of these NCERA committees? Multistate projects should 1) encourage groups to come together to write grants 2) congress wants to see changes in the system (which brought about a lot of renumbering of groups). Discussion was raised about targeting members that fill our NCREA-213s portfolio to make these objectives. Impacts (so what? Who cares?) will be key in the rewrite of this workgroup. When we submit our impacts, Bill will go through all of our impacts and select three and rewrite them to put the workgroup on the best footing. Foundational RFAs could come out at soon as next week according to the rumor mill. Rewrite timeline: Directors meet in March, Reviews in February, submitted December 2013. Spring will have a call for Appendix E. develop a writing team. Form the rewrite committee now. There is a response period to make any recommended changes. Bill Ravlin stated that he would is happy to be our administrator for the long haul. Keynote Presentation: Tim Gottwald. Global travel and trade largely defines our biosecurity risk. Huanglongbing: Liberibacter is the causative agent. No resistance in citrus. An exceptionally rapid dispersion. Disease expression is latent by months to three years. The older the tree there is an apparent increase in disease latency. Presented some monte-carlo stochastic modeling for predicting primary vs secondary inoculum. The insect vector favors field edges, including voids within fields. Discussed some modeling efforts using census data to predict pathogen risk. State reports Forest Nutter was absent  no presentation. Marcos Siller gave a Skype presentation on information systems and Mexican phytosecurity system. Talked about some mobile app development for surveillance (AKA  SCOPE). David inquired about the risk of Mexican HLB to spread to Florida. The pathogen seems to be moving Northward along the west coast of Mexico. HLB was first found in northern Mexico. Marcos Siller gave a Skype presentation concerning locust alert system. Three predominant locust species are perennial problems in Mexico. They established an alarm threshold based on a quartile analysis of multiple years of data. Scott Isard talked about iPIPE (i for industry). This model is supported by industry. Primary buy-in has been from seed companies. Talked a little about NAPPFAST and how it is being used in iPIPE. David Schmale and Shane Ross discuss transport and mixing of micro pops using UAVs. Fusarium sampling  how does Fusarium move? Collects using selective media and runs PCR and morphological confirmation of conidia. Keeps collections of flight populations. Can 11 strains of F. graminearum collected in the lower atmosphere cause disease?  yes, and they all produce mycotoxins. Working with Shane to look at the influence of lagrangian air parcels. Are finding some large proportions of unknown species of Fusarium. Shane wants to know how to identify unknown sources. Discusses Lagrangian boundaries some more. These models provide a much more informed confidence level than just a HYSPLIT model. This provides a much better resolution to the potential impact of climate change on atmospheric biotic movement. Jacob Wenger Talked about soybean aphid dispersal and host plant resistance and aphid biotypes. How are the biotypes dispersed and how is the biotypic phenotype inherited? Later-season soybean aphids are more genetically homogenious. Rod Nagoshi talked about his work on fall armyworm migration and monitoring. Using fall armyworm as an indicator of climate change. Primarily two populations that migrate northward out of either Texas or Florida. Products are a sampling network, efficient species ID and a multi-year map of migration pathways, explain migration patterns. Dale Griffin talked about long range dispersion of microorganisms. Discussed that biota that is carried from Africa to Florida. Bacillus is the most common organism and 0.1-10% of the organisms are alive. Atmospheric particles and microbes are highly correlated. Fungal and bacterial diversity is high. Includes virus and virus-like particles. Dust storms move diverse communities through the atmosphere. Rob Stoll talked about canopy architecture and turbulence effects on transport of air particles. Is looking at what happens when canopy features are changed. Even at sparse canopies, they still resemble a canopy. However, the more sparse the more downward flow into the canopy occurs. Pierre Amato talked about clouds as oases for movement of bacteria. Hypothesized that precipitation is a key component for the deposition of bacteria. Use sampling devices that can selectively sample cloud droplets. Pseudomonas are the most abundant genus of bacteria in clouds. Some bacteria induce ice formation and thus precipitation due to some of the proteins they excrete. Most droplet nuclei are biological. Low Ph reduces the ability of coulds to precipitate. Clouds are naturally C/N-limited; however, human emissions can increase C/N loads. Jeff Bradshaw talked about sawflies and psyllids. Presented some survey perspectives on wheat stem sawfly and potato psyllids. He hopes to understand the regional distribution patters of sawflies and how they interact with ag practices. Rob Meagher discussed the distribution of fall armyworms. Presented information on cross-strain attraction to pheromones. There isnt evidence that pheromones are keeping strains separate. Elson Shields talked about the movement of onion thrips and to test them for virus. Shared some video of his flight sampling. Talked about sampler efficiency for fungal spores. A 100% filled plate is required for maximum fungal sampling. Shelby Fleisher talked about some work with soybean aphid, common bean, and CMV. Presented some PCA analysis to support separate aphid populations. Concluded that genotypic diversity is very high within a field. Talked about estimating nest counts of bees in cucurbit fields. Ernest Valdez talked about bats and insect prey. Hoary bats are migratory and specialize in moth feeding and primarily army cutworms. Wind generators are a major mortality factor on bats, but it isnt clear why. Hypothesizes that the wind generators are essentially standing in bats migratory paths. Collected turbine-killed bats and identified the food in the guts. Most of the prey in New York and Texas were predominately lepidopterans. There were a lot of field crickets in the Texas bats. John Westbrook talked about estimating the contribution of immigrant fall armyworm. Is looking at the seasonal progression and migration status of fall armyworm populations. Used a HYSPLIT model to develop some predictions about the distribution of TX and FL fall armyworm populations. October 5 Official business Nominations for officers: Rob Meagher was nominated by the Ad Hoc committee for Secretary-Treasurer and he accepted the nomination. No other nominations from the floor. Vote was in favor of Rob Meagher to serve as Secretary-Treasurer in 2013. Future meeting locations. Discussed keeping the advantage of keeping the meeting in the U.S. due to the challenges of approval for foreign travel for our government employees. There was a discussion to hold the meeting in other locations throughout the North Central region as well as again in Ft. Lauderdale. Rob Meagher indicated that he would send a letter of thanks to the staff servicing our 2012 meeting location. Discussed having the meeting at Scottsbluff. Support for having the meeting in Scottsbluff. David Schmale made a motion to have the 2013 meeting in Scottsbluff, NE. A vote was passed in favor of having the meeting in Scottsbluff, NE. Jeff Bradshaw will send out a poll for potential meeting dates. Some discussion was held about having a 2-day meeting. Potentially could have a dinner break the first day and return for presentations. Maybe conduct the business session during a meal. Discussion was held about the impact document. Bill Ravlin would like to have a selection of impact statements that he could then choose from. David Schmale guided us through last years impact report and tagged specific segments for updates from individual contributors. There were solicitations for new segments. Conference grant discussion. Roger Maghery has brought this up at past meetings. David Schmale will contact Roger to follow up on conference grant. David Schmale adjourned the meeting.