Brief Summary of Minutes of Annual Meeting

Note: The original renewal of NC-215 (NCDC206) was submitted for approval in late 2004/early 2005, but the proposal was not approved by the directors in early 2005. Members of the committee held a series of informal discussions over the summer and elected to meet in November to plan for a revised proposal that would overcome the concerns of the directors and be approved in early 2006. The following are notes from this meeting, which focused almost exclusively on preparing a new proposal. Elections: Tom Powers as Secretary, Jamal Faghihi to make sure all participants complete and submit their Appendix E (www.wisc.edu/ncra/appendixE.doc) Emphasize our multi-disciplines within our research team including nematology, ecology, plant pathology T Niblack: Address cross-cutting agriculture production priorities (from the web page) into proposal 1. alternative ag production systems to enhance competitiveness in the rural landscape 2. develop improved animal, plant and microbial production, processing and marketing systems that are competitive, profitable and environmentally sound over the long term 3. develop alternative systems for storage, processing and application of waste products to the land so as to efficiently preserve and utilize nutrients 4. design economically and environmentally sound methods to convert biomass and secondary products into food and nonfood uses 5. construct an information base and methodologies to help form sound public policy that minimized conflicts resulting from divergent viewpoints of citizens, both urban and rural 6. assemble and maintain regional, national and international data bases on production systems and use them for modeling and decision support IPM priority research objectives 1. develop alternative controls based on biological control and cultural practices 2. investigate the genetics of pests and hosts to identify new and different vulnerabilities that can be exploited in pest control strategies 3. develop and evaluate systems and technology for IPM implementation 4. refine and develop rapid and positive pest detection and identification techniques to enhance the capability to predict the occurrence and magnitude of pest populations/infestations/ infection 5. reduce reliance on pesticides and the risk of human, animal and environmental exposure to pesticides 6. identify the economic and social impact if IPM on users, the environment, human health and safety and public appearance of food Natural resources &based upon which primary production activities such as agriculture, forestry, wildlife management, fisheries, management and mineral management depend. The understanding of ecological processes operating in human, plant and animal communities in their own right is essential. Similarly, the maximization of utilization efficiency is crucial to minimizing impact of natural resources. The interaction of human, plant and animal communities offers potential insights into sustainability of large landscape scale human-resource systems G Bird: commodity focus for North Central states  corn, soybeans, small grains as cropping systems that include fence rows 1. management (leader: Greg Tylka) a. three things i. want to do: ii. do now: alternative strategies to reduce or replace nematicides; corn - any chemical control that would be conferred by insecticides (e.g., Bt) will be lost with wide-spread planting of Bt 1. resistance variety selection (5-6 people) for soybean 2. virulence AG-type testing (4-5 people) 3. soil amendments: Inviro, compatible (2 people) 4. trap or no-host crop 5. interactions with others, i.e., winter weeds, SDS, rust 6. biological control iii. things we can get funding for: b. play to our SCN stakeholder support, including a list of previous and new supporters, attach letters of support c. develop integrative 2. invasive biology (leader: Tom Powers): SCN as a model organism for study of invasive biology a. address issue that SCN is widespread already b. species that can be re-invasive c. learn principles of this one, to face future invasions i. local climates ii. plant and nematode biodiversity provides invasion resistance 1. competition, antagonism 2. modify habitat and food source to support these communities d. things we know: rotation with non-host, population thresholds, diversity of nematodes in corn greater than in soybean fields, SCN doesnt develop in our native grasslands 3. database, predictive model, soil degree days a. planting dates across geography Products: Develop a decision-support database for management of SCN and other regionally important nematodes because there is no comprehensive collection available 1. Assemble a dynamic database of soybean cultivar reactions to evaluations from objective 1, including industry assessments, source of resistance, other defensive traits (e.g., tolerance and resistance to other pathogens), GPS coordinates, date, field history 2. Develop SOP (standard operating procedure), which do not currently exist. The variability among test protocols interferes with establishment of QA/QC a. screening SCN-resistance (Terry, Greg, Tim, Jason), present at soybean breeder meeting in Feb 2006 b. Establish a web site of procedures for extraction of SCN 3. Construct a database of virulence profiles (i.e., HG types) of SCN populations in the North Central region. Rationale: 93% of resistant cultivars are derived from a single source of resistance (PI 88788). We need to monitor the occurrence and spatio-temporal distribution of SCN populations that are adapted to this source 4. Consolidate and validate existing information on SCN generation time in the field based on degree-day accumulation and precipitation events across the region. Management decisions are currently based on greenhouse and laboratory studies. Rationale: provides a benchmark for evaluation of cultural control tactics. Method: soybean plants will be planted in naturally infested sites. A model predicting generation time based on degree day accumulation (50 F basal temperature) will be used to schedule harvests for observation of adult females. Accumulation of degree days begins at planting because SCN is an obligate parasite. a. Weed hosts (overwintering, chill units), e.g., henbit, b. Do changes in developmental time explain some of the regional variability in planting date 5. Prototype of the fundamentals of invasive biology 6. Model of SCN invasiveness Helicotylenchus  Ernie Bernard, Virginia Ferris Funding NCSRP  North Central Afternoon  break into two groups, 1) management and 2) invasive biology to proceed on the following aspects of the proposal for each objective: a) Justification, b) Literature review, c) Statement of objective, and d) Methods Regroup as whole group to discuss Objective 3 (already integrated above) 4 November 2005 session August 17-19, 2006 was identified as our next annual meeting to be held at Michigan State University with George Bird as Chair, An MacGuidwin as Vice Chair and Jason Bond as Secretary. We tentatively identified as Carbondale, Illinois as the meeting site for 2007. Tom Powers presented conceptual foundation of Objective 2 with the group as a whole. Subgroups continued to work on Objectives 1, 2 and 3 separately and reconvened at 11:40 am

Planning meeting only--the group was focused on preparing a new proposal to be submitted for approval by the directors in early 2006.

None listed.