Pacific Nut Producer Magazine

Tag: USDA ARS

  • USDA Completes Laboratory Modernization to Advance Pecan Breeding and Research

    The Pecan Breeding and Genetics Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) recently completed a 2.5 million dollars laboratory modernization to accelerate pecan breeding through innovations in genetics and plant disease research. A ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on March 26 to commemorate the completion of the project.

    Pecan trees represent North America’s native nut tree and a multimillion-dollar crop. These trees have been cultivated commercially for less than 150 years. It takes an average of 28 years from planting a new seedling to releasing a new pecan cultivar with traditional methods of pecan breeding. This is due to the long waiting period for pecan trees to start producing nuts, which takes up more than half of the time. With the new modernized laboratory, the Pecan Breeding and Genetics Program will now be able to incorporate genetic techniques into pecan breeding to accurately predict mature nut traits on young seedlings, saving up to a decade in the breeding process.

    Breeding new pecan cultivars is a lengthy process with long waiting periods of 7-10 years before a pecan tree can produce nuts and long testing phases to evaluate potential cultivars. It is challenging to support pecan breeding efforts due to their high resource demands and extended timelines, which make it impractical for private or commercial entities and challenging for academic programs.

    The event was hosted by USDA’s ARS and the Texas Pecan Grower’s Association. ARS leaders, State Representatives, scientists, and members of the pecan industry organizations toured the new laboratory with now dedicated research spaces for plant genetics, microscopy, tissue culture, controlled-environment growth chambers, and plant disease research.

    “Today marks the celebration of the opening of a new genetics and pathology laboratory,” said Warren Chatwin, the Lead Scientist at the Pecan Breeding and Genetics Program in Somerville, Texas. “This facility will enable ARS’ researchers here at Somerville to advance pecan breeding and support modern genetics and plant disease research, which hasn’t been possible since this site was established in the 1980s.”

    “This event also highlights the significant impact of our stakeholders, the pecan industry organizations. They have unified their voice through the National Pecan Federation to express the need for increased quality, accuracy, and speed of pecan breeding, genetics, and plant disease research, leading to the establishment of this laboratory space. The success of our research is only possible through partnerships with stakeholders including the Texas Pecan Grower’s Association, which has provided decades of support and significant contributions, most recently through the National Pecan Federation,” added Chatwin.

    In addition, researchers will now be able to do controlled evaluations of promising breeding lines with different regional strains of pecan scab. Pecan scab, caused by the fungal pathogen Venturia effusa, is the most economically significant disease in the pecan industry and has high diversity across the geographic range of cultivated pecans. For the first time, the Pecan Breeding and Genetics Program will now be able to screen pecan scab cultures from all areas of the country in controlled environments to identify new sources of disease resistance and incorporate those unique samples into the breeding program. Researchers will also be able to do controlled evaluations for other significant and emerging pathogens of pecan, including the heavily quarantined international pathogen, Xylella fastidiosa.

    The Pecan Breeding and Genetics program has released 32 pecan cultivars to the industry, with notable releases like ‘Pawnee,’ which moved the commercial harvest window forward to mid-September, ‘Lakota,’ which has high scab resistance, and ‘Wichita,’ a high-yielding cultivar that performs well in the West. USDA-ARS’ most recently released cultivars include ‘Pueblo,’ ‘Seneca,’ and ‘Zuni,’ which were patented in 2022.

    The Agricultural Research Service is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific in-house research agency. Daily, ARS focuses on solutions to agricultural problems affecting America. Each dollar invested in U.S. agricultural research results in $20 of economic impact.

  • Winter Honey Bees Show Resistance to a Common Insecticide

    Winter honey bees, compared to newly emerged summer bees, have a better ability to withstand the harmful effects of a widely-used insecticide in pest management, according to a recent study published in Apidologie.

    Honey bees feed on imidacloprid during a cage experiment. (Photo by Mohamed Alburaki, ARS)

    United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agricultural Research Service (ARS) researchers from the Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, found winter honey bees’ consumption of a nearly lethal, imidacloprid-laced syrup did not affect their survival during the study.

    Imidacloprid is an insecticide made to mimic nicotine and is toxic to insects. This powerful insecticide is widely used in agriculture for pest management control. Honey bees are likely to encounter imidacloprid while foraging in the field or through contaminated hive products.

    “Although imidacloprid toxicity to honey bees is an important concern for beekeepers, our results provide good news,” said Miguel Corona and Mohamed Alburaki, researchers at the ARS Bee Research Laboratory. “Our research shows that winter honey bees have unrecognized physiological mechanisms to counteract the effects of insecticides.”

    The study assessed differences in diet behaviors for summer and winter honey bees in a controlled laboratory setting. Researchers provided sublethal doses of the imidacloprid-laced syrup to bees as necessary. Winter bees showed a preference to consuming imidacloprid-laced syrup over untreated sugar syrup while summer honey bees made the safe choice and avoided consuming the laced syrup each time.

    According to Corona, it is important to study the differences of summer and winter honey bees’ diets.  Honey bee colonies survive extreme seasonal differences in temperature and forage by producing two seasonal phenotypes of workers: summer and winter bees. These seasonal phenotypes differ significantly in their psychological characteristics as well as their susceptibility to disease and ability to handle poisonous substances.

    “Winter bees and summer bees undergo physiological changes to cope with drastic seasonal changes in temperature and the availability of nutritional resources,” said Corona and Alburaki. “Our results suggest that long-lived winter bees are especially well-adapted to tolerate higher levels of chemical stressors.”

    Corona said that although the study’s results show that winter bees could tolerate more intoxication by imidacloprid, they are still susceptible to higher concentrations of this insecticide in field settings. — By the USDA-ARS

  • Study Shows Amygdalin in Almond Nectar can Reduce Viruses & Gut Parasites in Honey Bees

    Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Research Service (ARS) have found that a component in almond nectar and pollen can reduce honey bee viruses and gut parasites, which are some of the leading threats to bee health and colonies.

    The study, published in the journal Insects, showed amygdalin – a naturally-occurring chemical compound found in the nectar and pollen of almond trees – decreased levels of chronic bee paralysis virus, black queen cell virus and deformed wing virus. The bees also showed increased levels of beneficial gut bacteria and lower levels of the gut parasite Lotmaria passim.

    “We have found nectar chemicals can work as an antibiotic in bees, even against important viruses,” said Jay Evans, USDA-ARS research entomologist. “We were interested in amygdalin as a possible inhibitor of bee disease, because it is so important to the diet of honey bees.”

    The bees were fed natural concentrations of amygdalin over a two-month period as part of the study conducted in a bee yard at the Bee Research Laboratory in Beltsville, MD. In the treatment group, bees received a sugar solution supplemented with dissolved amygdalin from a supplier. The control group just received sugar water.

    The findings showed that amygdalin, which was previously reported to cause malaise in bees when fed sugar syrup, did not cause any negative effects to bee behavior.

    Amygdalin is not only found in the nectar and pollen of almond trees, but in a variety of other crops, such as cherries, nectarines and apples. During almond pollination season, western honey bees inevitably consume the natural compound since almond crops are almost exclusively pollinated by honey bees.

    The Agricultural Research Service is the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s chief scientific in-house research agency. Daily, ARS focuses on solutions to agricultural problems affecting America. Each dollar invested in agricultural research results in $17 of economic impact.

  • Keeping Up with the Evolving Navel Orangeworm Pest Pressure

    So how bad can Navel Orangeworm damage get in our tree nut orchards? Hopefully we won’t have to find out this season, as growers are equipped with more tools and practices to control the pest. Watch this brief interview with Research Entomologist Joel Siegel as he shares some evolving trends in pest pressure across the state, and read more about it in Pacific Nut Producer Magazine.