Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

This meeting had two major goals. The first was to introduce the group to the many new members and hear about current research. The second was to make concrete plans for group projects. Since the inception of this multistate project a goal has been to leverage our geographic breadth, breadth of approaches, and shared goals to work together to positively affect pest and pollinator management. During the previous annual meeting, we discussed general areas for group projects where participants thought we could be successful in translating our fundamental understanding of chemical communication into practice for pest and pollinator management. This year, a major goal was to develop concrete projects with applied potential that we could work on together.

To that end, the objectives of this meeting were to:

1. Discuss new research developments over the past year, in particular introducing new members.
2. Discuss four project ideas and measure the group’s interest in pursuing. Identify ways of collaborating to meet those goals.

On January 10, the group met to discuss research developments over the past year with individual presentations by many participants. These presentations are discussed in the Accomplishments section below. In the afternoon, we “pitched” the ideas for Group projects. The Group project ideas are also discussed in the Accomplishment section below.

 On January 11, the group had an update and discussion with Dr. Kistner-Thomas from NIFA. We then delved deeper into and modified the four Group projects and a new idea for the group that emerged on the first day.

Accomplishments:

Short term outcomes: Building Opportunities for Collaboration:

           Building on the areas of impact delineated at the last multistate meeting, several members of the group developed several areas with great potential to have applied impact over the next 3-5 years if given a concerted group effort. These projects were written up for all group members to consider before the meeting and formed the basis for much discussion during the meeting. The group identified a critical opportunity for radical collaboration around leveraging past successes and evaluating them across systems.  Given the diversity of systems in which we conduct research, we are uniquely positioned to conduct similar assays across environmental and cropping systems in order to arrive at an understanding at how and why certain approaches work consistently. 

Four Group Projects

1. Predalure—a group experiment to evaluate the potential for using herbivore-induced plant volatiles to attract the natural enemies of herbivores. Methyl salicylate has been found to be attractive to natural enemies in many systems and is marketed under the tradename PredaLure (winter green oil—methyl salicylate). However, it is not known how different groups of natural enemies will respond to methyl salicylate in different crops and different locations. Cesar Rodriguez-Saona and his postdoc Patricia Prade (Rutgers) are spearheading this project to test this product in multiple crops and multiple states (New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia). We will also use this as an opportunity to train students and develop a cohort of undergraduate students across states in chemical ecology by involving them in group project meetings.

2. Synergisms in chemical ecology approaches—this group project will be a literature review on the success of chemical ecology based techniques when used alone and in combination with other approaches. Semiochemical mediated pest management relies on an IPM approach of combining multiple tactics and yet we do not have a solid understanding of how different strategies can be combined to maximize their effect. This project will explore the underlying mechanisms of how multiple stresses interact so we can layer and combine multiple mechanisms of action. We will consider these five areas of chemical ecology application to pest management Pheromones: attraction and mating disruption, attract and kill; Host plant resistance: passive and induced, the basis for many other of the mechanisms; Crop rotation: understanding the mechanisms fundamental; Intercropping: associational resistance mechanisms; Indirect defenses: fear factor, induced volatiles, retention in habitat, spatial patterns. For each of these categories, we will elaborate on the hypothesized mechanisms and alternatives. A desired outcome would be to predict which would act synergistically, additively or tradeoff. Would also like to highlight concrete next steps for research.
3. Microbes in sustainable agriculture-- Clare Casteel Initiated discussions on a larger multi-state wide project on developing insect management tools based on soil-microbes and chemical ecology, with positive responses/interest from Dr. Kersch-Becker, Dr. Ali, and Dr. Wickings.
4. Researchers working with companies trying to bring chemical ecology- based solutions to market noted the large regulatory hurdles encountered. Many of the chemical ecology based solutions are mixtures of compounds that are already approved for use in food, but are expensive to individually We will draft a letter to the EPA that identifies the ways the regulatory burden could be eased while maintaining safety standards.

Outputs:

Work and accomplishments over the past year include: 

• The Poveda lab completed their project on the effects of exposure to pesticide residues on bee health, publishing one paper and submitting one more.
• Agrawal’s group completed a project on squash resistance to two major pests (squash bugs and striped cucumber beetles). They found opposing patterns of resistance two the 2 insects among the two major domesticates, and that the squash bug eavesdrops on the striped cucumber beetle's pheromone.
• Greg Loeb’s group tested the efficacy of candidate repellents for Drosophila suzukii in the lab and in raspberry field plots at different scales. They tested different methods for controlling release of volatile repellents under field conditions and measured ambient concentrations of candidate volatile repellent for Drosophila suzukii at different distances from release point and compared to infestation levels.
• Anh’s lab has identified multiple detoxification gene families from the genome/transcriptome analysis of different insects.
• Lynn Adler’s group analyzed data and prepared a manuscript relating land use and floral resources to bee diversity on sunflowers. They also prepared and published a manuscript showing that the effect of sunflower pollen on pathogen infection differs with bumble bee species. Finally, they conducted an experiment assessing drought effects on pesticides in pollen of three crops and sent pollen samples for pesticide analysis.
• Rachel Vannette’s lab finalized publication of work describing microbial suppression of floral pathogens and effects on honey bee feeding and are continuing to investigate the effects secondary chemicals in nectar on microbial growth and pollinator preference.
• Hilary Sandler conducted four field trials at UMass Cranberry Station evaluating a total of 13 novel compounds/regimes (including FRAC Group M1,7,19 and pre-mix combinations of 9&12, 7&12, 5 biocontrol/microbial formulations) in comparison with Grower Standards and non-sprayed control for their effect on cranberry fruit rot, yield and fruit quality parameters of interest.
• Clare Casteel initiated a new project on the role of soil microbiomes and farmer practices that mediate foliar defense induction in dry bean and other crops. They collected soil and plant tissue from a full factorial experiment with diverse cover crop regimes in the field from two regions in New York including soil samples from ~85 organic farmers in New York.
• John Losey’s lab initiated a new project to look at the role of carrot plant volatiles and floral and foliar resources on the lady beetle attraction and retention. They collected data on the palatability of five different common carrot species and found that they are not consumed by any of the 3 lady beetle species we have tested to date. Additionally, we have sewn and grown two species of biennial carrot species (Queen Anne’s lace and poison hemlock) for use in laboratory and field studies planed for summer 2022 and 2023. Finally, they established colonies of five lady beetle species in five different genera to use in our experiments.
• Monica Kersch-Becker collected preliminary data on the effects of salicylate defenses in strengthening pest control in tomato plants.
• Keyan-Zhu demonstrated that resistance to aphids in CCA1-ox Abrabidopsis line is due to elevated basal indole glucosinolate production, and that the CCA population of the green peach aphid can adapt to CCA1-ox.
• Jennifer Thaler’s group collaborated with Hermann’s group to test the release of predator pheromones in grower fields as a way to reduce Colorado potato beetle damage in potato and eggplant.

Milestones:

As a group, we met a major milestone by establishing four large group projects. Individual projects met their own milestones.