COMPREHENSIVE FIRE BLIGHT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS FOR THE UNITED STATES

For fire blight management nationwide, there are critical needs for the following: 1) improved non-antibiotic management options and strategies that are validated on a national scale, 2) improved methods to minimize systemic spread of the pathogen that often results in tree death, 3) development of elite pre-breeding parental apple lines with fire blight resistance to ensure that future apple cultivars will be much less susceptible to fire blight, and 4) economic analyses that will guide research, extension, and deployment of optimized management strategies that maximize grower returns. Responding to those needs, the major goals of this project are to reimagine and develop novel strategies for fire blight management that are effective on highly-susceptible consumer-preferred cultivars, develop fire blight resistant apple pre-breeding lines, and provide much needed economic data that growers can use to evaluate the merits of top-performing management programs and their associated costs, and deliver nationally-coordinated disease management programs to growers. The objectives of this project are to: (1) develop novel prescriptive approaches for blossom and shoot blight that increase precision in fire blight management; (2) determine the impact of E. amylovora strain virulence on systemic movement within trees, and develop detection methods for virulence typing to guide management decisions; (3) develop pre-breeding lines with improved fire blight resistance and fruit quality traits using rapid cycle marker-assisted selection; (4) develop a bioeconomic model to identify profit maximizing and risk minimizing fire blight management strategies; and (5) develop and deliver effective extension programming that integrates project research objectives and research-driven results to improve grower knowledge and application of effective fire blight management strategies.