1 / 10

Forest Health Initiative: A Model for Rapid Response to Emerging Pests

Forest Health Initiative: A Model for Rapid Response to Emerging Pests. C. Dana Nelson, Project Leader/Research Geneticist dananelson@fs.fed.us Southern Research Station Southern Institute of Forest Genetics Harrison Experimental Forest Saucier, MS. Forest Health Crisis.

Download Presentation

Forest Health Initiative: A Model for Rapid Response to Emerging Pests

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Forest Health Initiative:A Model for Rapid Response to Emerging Pests C. Dana Nelson, Project Leader/Research Geneticist dananelson@fs.fed.us Southern Research Station Southern Institute of Forest Genetics Harrison Experimental Forest Saucier, MS Kentucky/Tennessee/SRS Stateline Meeting

  2. Forest Health Crisis • Invasive pests, climate change • New approaches and tools required to slow decline and recover health • Forest Health Initiative developed to test a hypothesis: • that a coordinated effort in biotechnology research will lead to resistant trees capable of restoring a species in a relevant time frame • American chestnut selected as test case • www.foresthealthinitiative.org Kentucky/Tennessee/SRS Stateline Meeting

  3. Forest Health Initiative (FHI) • Key components of FHI hypothesis: • Coordinated effort • Steering Committee, Social/Environmental Group, Science Advisory Committee, PIs, Cooperating Scientists and their research teams • Biotechnology research • Biological Sciences effort– genetics, molecular biology, pathology • Resistant trees in Relevant time • ensure blight resistance through seeds from adapted and diverse American chestnuts • 3 years to a ‘plantable tree’ • tangible progress w/array of promising trees going to field tests • infrastructure/know-how-- to plant and grow trees in reintroduction/restoration Kentucky/Tennessee/SRS Stateline Meeting

  4. Start 0 CmSI0050 26984 CmSI0660 1585392 CmSI0532 2341908 CmSI0531 2776209 R04_0775 3077960 CmSI0551 4712728 CmSI0437 6041717 Cmp0028 7163814 End 7403370 Integrated mapping necessary for finding candidate resistance genes Genetic mapping QTL mapping Physical mapping BAC contigs Genome Sequence contigs/scaffolds Kentucky/Tennessee/SRS Stateline Meeting CD Nelson, USFS; M. Staton, Clemson; J Carlson, Penn State

  5. Field tests of genetic materials are important for advancing program SG2-3 Chestnut crosses at age 2 EP155 Inoculations at age 6 Measure canker sizes, late summer, age 6 Kentucky/Tennessee/SRS Stateline Meeting The American Chestnut Foundation

  6. Gene Transformation – Transgenic Plant Production Agrobacterium (AGL1) infection of chestnut PEMS TG somatic seedlings in pots Selection of transgenic (TG) colonies with Geneticin TG somatic shoots in vitro Air-lift bioreactors make cells for transformation every 2 wk TG events in somatic embryogenesis (SE) production TG events grown in flasks TG events grown on plates somatic embryos harvested Kentucky/Tennessee/SRS Stateline Meeting S. Merkle, Univ. Georgia

  7. Early Leaf Assay American Necrotic length (mm) Chinese American Chinese Error bars = 1 SEM T-test: P<.0001 • Combined data from 5 experiments (48-52 inocs per leaf type) Chinese chestnut leaves consistently show less necrosis than American; same pattern seen in field inoculations Kentucky/Tennessee/SRS Stateline Meeting W. Powell, SUNY- ESF

  8. Field Tests, evaluating improvements(e.g., 640 transgenic trees & 534 controls) Kentucky/Tennessee/SRS Stateline Meeting W. Powell, SUNY- ESF

  9. FHI Conclusions • FHI hypothesis is tentatively accepted • ‘plantable trees’ have been achieved in short period • know-how & infrastructure developed • Continuing work will • evaluate the new materials under field conditions • advance winners to additional field tests • apply mapping resources to breeding programs • Adapt FHI to new case • e.g., thousand cankers disease Kentucky/Tennessee/SRS Stateline Meeting

  10. Thousand Cankers Diseasebasic biological sciences needs • Screening methods for assaying resistance • insect vector and/or fungus pathogen • Genetics of host resistance/susceptibility • Markers and genes for resistance • Biotech tools for engineering resistance • Breeding populations for deploying resistance • Cooperators with trees of interest and land for field testing Kentucky/Tennessee/SRS Stateline Meeting

More Related