On August 21, 2008 the department hosted an open house for the new Plant Pathology Field Equipment Storage and Work Space located at the Iowa State University Ag Engineering/Agronomy Research Farm between Ames and Boone. The 6,000 sq ft facility is divided into 4,400 sq ft of open space for large plot equipment storage and 1,600 sq ft for eight individual rooms to be used for small supply storage and work space.

AMES, Iowa -- There are numerous plant-parasitic nematodes in the world, but only a handful are responsible for the largest part of an estimated $157 billion in agricultural damage globally every year. Nematodes are small worms that burrow into plant roots and feed off living cells.

Now, Iowa State University researchers have contributed to the release of the annotated genome of one of the most destructive nematodes: Meloidogyne incognita -- the southern root-knot nematode, as reported recently in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

AMES, Iowa -- Iowa State researchers are getting to the root of a problem with some Iowa Bur Oak trees. The disease is caused by a fungus and can first be spotted attacking the leaves on Bur Oak trees. Click here to find out more! "Somebody might look at this tree in their back yard and figure it's a goner," said Tom Harrington, Iowa State University professor. Read More!

Plant Disease Editor's Pick. North vs. South. Sooty blotch and flyspeck occur on apples in both the upper Midwestern and southeastern United States, but a disease forecaster developed in the Southeast was ineffective in the Midwest. Read the August Plant Disease Editor’s Pick to see how Mark Gleason and colleagues modified the forecaster for use in the upper Midwest. Hint: Leaf wetness is caused by dew in the Midwest and rain in the Southeast.

Entomologist Laura Jesse offers simple strategies to fight the battle against bugs, even those pesky carpenter ants, in your home.

Researchers at Iowa State have been flying balloons this summer in the name of biosecurity science. A team of plant pathologists and engineering researchers led by Forrest Nutter, plant pathology, are using weather balloons to carry a first-of-its-kind device developed to measure the spore clouds escaping from a diseased field of wheat. Read More!

Contacts:
Tom Harrington, Plant Pathology, (515) 294-0582, tcharrin@iastate.edu
Stephen Fraedrich, USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station, (706) 559-4273, sfraedrich@fs.fed.us
Stevin Westcott, Press Office, USDA Forest Service Southern Research Station, (828) 259-0512, swestcott@fs.fed.us

ScienceWatch.com, a division of Thomsen Reuters Publishing, tracks trends and performance in research publications globally. Each month, a Special Topic is covered, providing citation analyses and commentary for selected scientific research areas that have experienced notable recent advances or are of special current interest. For May, 2008, the Special Topic was Mycotoxins. The citation analysis featured the top 20 most-cited papers from the past 10 years.

AMES, Iowa - In an international collaboration, researchers in Allen Miller's lab in the Department of Plant Pathology at Iowa State University have shown that a tiny gene exists in all members of the largest family of plant viruses. Without this gene, the virus is harmless. The discovery was published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read More!

The agronomy department will host a series of three George Washington Carver Lectures over the next three weeks. The lectures will celebrate the 150th Anniversary of Iowa State and honor Carver.