The July TREE Fund webinar will be presented by Dr. Jeanne Romero-Severson on the topic of “A Three Pronged Approach to understanding the defensive mechanisms in Green Ash resistant to EAB.” The webinar will be held Tuesday, July 27 at noon CDT. ISA and SAF continuing education credits are available for watching the entire live broadcast.
The most enduring mechanism of controlling pests and diseases in plants is genetic resistance in the host. In our quest to save green ash from the invasive insect emerald ash borer, we use a three pronged approach to enhance the native resistance we see in 1% of the trees: 1) Develop a phenotyping method that reliably distinguishes between trees that kill some of the larvae and tree that kill none, 2) Cross good by good to produce better and 3) Use metabolomics to identity the group of compounds that the best trees deploy to kill the larvae. We now have trees that resist EAB better than their parents and we will continue until we have trees suitable for restoration of green ash.
Jeanne Romero-Severson, Ph.D., is a Professor of Quantitative Genetics and Genomics in the Biological Sciences department at the University of Notre Dame.
TREE Fund webinars are free.