The President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, issued a proclamation about the 150 years of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) on 15 May 2012. It states that the USDA has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the American people for generations.  During the Great Depression, the Department helped bring an end to the Dust Bowl by promoting soil conservation.  Through two World Wars, the Victory Garden Program fed troops and families around the world.   The USDA worked to bring electric power to rural communities, establish the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and School Lunch Programs, implement the Nation's food safety regulations, and protect forests and private lands. The President states that throughout its history, USDA has empowered communities across the country and helped to ensure the children a future rich with promise and possibility, and now USDA continues to serve the public interest by providing leadership on agriculture, natural resources, safe and nutritious food, research, and a broad spectrum of related issues. As part of the White House Rural Council, the Department is striving to expand opportunity for millions of families by promoting job growth and investing in infrastructure that will drive progress in the 21st century.  Through the Feed the Future initiative, USDA is supporting the nation's commitment to combat hunger and improve food security worldwide. 

The International Society for Plant Pathology (ISPP) congratulated the USDA on its 150th Anniversary, as shown on the ISPP web-site. In doing so, ISPP pointed out that USDA was established less than 20 years after potato late blight devastated crops in Europe and North America, and that since then the USDA has played a seminal role in leading the fight against plant diseases.

On the recommendation of ISPP Vice-President Dr Wafaa El-Khoury, the ISPP Executive has approved the establishment of a subject matter committee on Plant Quarantine and Biosecurity. It is listed at the ISPP web-page and the membership is given on the Committee's web-site. The Chair is Dr Shuifang Zhu of China, and there are three Co-Chairs Dr Simon McKirdy of Australia, Dr Marina Barba of Italy, and Dr James Stack of the USA.

Antonio F Logrieco (Vice President of the Mediterranean Phytopathological Union) wishes to remind readers about this workshop to be held in Bari, Italy, from 25-27 October 2012. It will take place over two and a half days in five sessions. A session for poster discussion will also be organized. Contributions of invited speakers and other selected presentations will be published in a special issue of Phytopatologia Mediterranea. See: Coming Events.

The main issue will be plant health, based on knowledge of host-pathogen interactions, control and prevention of important pests and pathogenic and toxigenic microorganisms, including viruses, bacteria, mycoplasmas, fungi, oomycetes and certain insects, mites or nematodes, in relation to the quality and safety of the final agricultural commodities. In particular the intention is to provide tools, to demonstrate advantages of pre- and post-harvest measures intended to reduce and control plant diseases and to avoid the risks of mycotoxin accumulation in plant products and in the subsequent food or feed chains. The Workshop is directed to transfer knowledge and possible solutions to all actors in each chain of Mediterranean crops: consumers, agro-food producers, food or feed industries, policy makers and legislators, as well as the scientific community. The main crops or chains that will be considered are: grapevine, cereals, olive, horticulture, Mediterranean fresh and dried fruits. All information will be found at the official Website of the Congress at http://MPU2012.ba.cnr.it, where interest in receiving further information can be shown.

The Workshop is organized by the Mediterranean Phytopathological Union (MPU) with the patronage of the International Society of Plant Pathology, the Mediterranean branch of the International Society for Mycotoxicology, the Italian Plant Pathology Society, the National Council of Research - Institute of Science of Food Production, the Agronomic Mediterranean Institute, the Italian Agricultural Research Council, and the sponsorship of 7th FP MycoRed project.

This challenging title may be found on-line in Fungal Diversity 54, (1) (2012) by clicking on http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13225-012-0171-z. It is by V Hofstetter, B Buyck, D Croll, O Viret, A Couloux and K Gindro. It appears in this special issue of the journal along with a number of reviews and papers on endophytes and epiphytes.

The questioning paper is summarized as follows. Esca disease, on the wood of grapevine, has become devastating during the last thirty years and now represents a major concern to all wine-producing areas. It has been attributed to a group of systematically diverse fungi that are considered to be latent pathogens. This new study is an in-depth comparison between the mycota of healthy and diseased plants taken from the same vineyard to determine which fungi become invasive when foliar symptoms of esca appear. An unprecedented 158 species, were reported from grapevine wood in a Swiss vineyard plot. An identical mycota inhabited wood of both healthy and diseased plants. Esca-associated fungi were not transmitted from adult to nursery plants through grafting. It is concluded that the presumed esca-associated pathogens are likely to be saprobes decaying already senescent or dead wood resulting from intensive pruning, frost or injuries such as grafting, and that the cause of esca disease therefore remains elusive and requires further scientific examination.

This Special Issue of the journal on SpringerLink also includes among others:-

Endophytic mediation of reactive oxygen species and antioxidant activity in plants: a review

Endophytes and their role in phytoremediation

Fungal endophytes: an untapped source of biocatalysts

Dr Neena Mitter and colleagues from the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology have been successful with an application to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Dr Mitters project is one of more than 100 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 8 grants announced by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Neenas (Phase 1) Grand Challenge Exploration discovery grant was selected from an international field of more than 2700 applications. The proposal titled BioClay  crop protection against biotic stresses from field to market is a new approach to developing BioClay technology to deliver biological agents targeting plant pathogens. If successful, the technology offers a safe, low cost, and environmentally sustainable solution for managing field and postharvest diseases. Successful Phase 1 projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to US$1 million. To receive funding, Dr Mitter and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round 8 winners demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of five critical global heath and development topic areas that included agriculture development, immunization and nutrition.

A section of FAO termed INPhO, the Information Network on Post-harvest Operations, provides access to documents covering many post-harvest activities associated with agricultural commodities. It provides a simple and advanced search engine to make it easy to locate required information. Wherever possible, publications are provided as downloadable files.

See: http://www.fao.org/inpho/publications/en/?page=1&ipp=5.

A review paper has recently been published on-line in Nature 484 (7393) 186-194 on Emerging fungal threats to animal, plant and ecosystem health. It is by Matthew C Fisher, Henk D A, Briggs C J, Brownstein J S, Madoff L C, McCraw, S L and Sarah J Gurr (12 April 2012).

The paper argues that there have been recently an increasing number of diseases in natural populations and managed landscapes. It states that animals and plants have been affected by an unprecedented number of fungal and fungal-like diseases which have caused severe die-offs and extinctions in wild species, and that these are jeopardizing food security. Human activity is argued to intensify dispersal of fungal pathogens by modifying natural environments and thereby creating new opportunities for evolution. Furthermore it is claimed that nascent fungal infections will cause increasing attrition of biodiversity, with wide implications for human and ecosystem health. It concludes that steps must be taken to tighten biosecurity worldwide.

Examples of plant diseases will be well-known but fungal infections of bats, amphibians, bees and sea inhabitants will be less well-known to plant pathologists. Calculations and underlying formulae are presented to reveal extents of threats.

This will be held in Mymensingh, Bangladesh in late August and early September 2012. See Coming Events or see the web-site.

Further to the article in the April 2012 ISPP Newsletter about Bacterial Canker of Kiwifruit in New Zealand, news has come about a promising biological control for the disease. Biological Solutions, a company run there by Dave Leonard and Tom Harris, specialises in supplying a range of beneficial bacteria and fungi products for horticultural use and has come up with Plant Shield more than a year ago after being asked by some Bay of Plenty kiwifruit clients to find something that would help fight the bacterial pathogen. A combination spray of three strains of naturally occurring, soil-based bacteria, Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus pumilis and Pseudomonas fluorescens, which are commonly used to treat fruit diseases such as botrytis, downy and powdery mildew and rot, has been found to be effective in controlling Pseudomonas syringae pv actinidiae in laboratory tests. Tests continue and growers are now testing the product in their fields.

Another strategy that has evolved in pathogenic fungi so that they can overcome the resistance process in plants is shown in new team work led by Nicholas Talbot from the University of Exeter, UK. The work is on Magnaporthe oryzae invading rice cells in the process of causing rice blast disease. Rice has a receptor protein which recognises the products released from the cell walls of the fungus. As a normal consequence, signalling pathways leading to the expression of resistance are activated. Talbots team however found that M. oryzae also secretes another protein as it invades the rice tissue. This protein accumulates between the fungal wall and the rice plasma membrane preventing the activation of resistance.

The paper is Thomas A Mentlak, Anja Kombrink, Tomonori Shinya, Lauren S Ryder, Ippei Otomo, Hiromasa Saitoh, Ryohei Terauchi, Yoko Nishizawa, Naoto Shibuya, Bart P H J Thomma, and Nicholas J Talbot (2012) The Plant Cell 24 (1) 322-335. Effector-Mediated Suppression of Chitin-Triggered Immunity by Magnaporthe oryzae Is Necessary for Rice Blast Disease.