Boxwood Blight Insight Group Objectives & Approach

This project takes a systems approach to boxwood blight mitigation through focused science and application studies, stakeholder partnerships and international collaborations.

Specific Objectives & Approaches

1. To prevent blighted plant materials from entering the nursery trade by

  • Developing on-site commercial strip-test kits for pathogen detection
  • Surveying Oregon nurseries for boxwood blight
  • Bridging major knowledge gaps in the blight epidemiology
  • Latent infection under Oregon climatic conditions
  • Pathogen colonization, latency and phenotypic diversity
  • Cultivar and relative humidity impacts on pathogen sporulation
  • Field epidemiology
  • Identifying critical control points (CCP) at production nurseries to inform development of best management practices (BMPs)

2. To better manage the disease at sites of contamination by

  • Evaluating antidesiccants (antitranspirants) for their potential as a physical barrier to mitigate blight development under field conditions
  • Further developing biocontrol agents into final products
  • Enhancing boxwood self-defense through
  • Systemic acquired resistance inducers and selective fertilization
  • Silicon treatment and ultraviolet radiation
  • Integrating three key existing technologies
  • More resistant cultivars
  • Mulching
  • Fungicide program
  • Preventing less susceptible boxwood cultivars from becoming a ‘Trojan horse’ while encouraging their adoption

3. To build resilience into boxwood production and gardening by

  • Developing more resistant boxwood cultivars
  • Cataloging and manipulating boxwood microbiome against the boxwood blight pathogen
  • Facilitating adoption of more resistant boxwood cultivars

4. To ensure all recommendations are economically viable by

  • Developing baseline production model
  • Analyzing cost/benefits of changes in blight mitigation practice
  • Partial budgeting
  • Performing sensitivity tests
  • Determining the economic return of long-term investment in blight mitigation
  • Assessing the overall project impacts

5. To put research into practice – helping stakeholders and the next generation of scientists and educators to achieve sustainable boxwood production and gardening

  • Translating research into products, protocols, and recommendations
  • Project newsletter
  • Image and video library
  • Practical knowledge
  • Products and protocols
  • BMPs for different clientele groups
  • Delivering to end users
  • Outreach website and online knowledge center
  • Field demonstrations
  • Webinars and virtual meetings
  • Partnering with national ‘networks’
  • Workshops and symposia
  • Presentations and recordings
  • Next generation scientists and educators
  • Citizen science projects
  • Documenting project impacts
  • Changes in knowledge
  • Changes in practices
  • Changes in conditions

Team Capacity-Building Seminars

A Combined Approach for Early In-Field Detection of Beech Leaf Disease Using Near-Infrared Spectroscopy and Machine Learning

By Dr. Carrie Fearer • July 23, 2023
by Dr. Carrie Fearer of University of New Hampshire

The Plant Microbiome & How to Study It With High Throughput Sequencing

By Dr. Xiaoping Li • February 16, 2021
by Dr. Xiaoping Li of Virginia Tech

Microsoft Teams Training

By Paige Ghra • July 20, 2020
by Paige Ghra of Virginia Tech on July 20, 2020