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For Immediate Release

Researcher ContactInfo:

David Showalter, email: showalter.53@osu.edu,twitter: @showalterdn

Asiantrees hold secrets to stopping emerald ash borer, researchers invite public to aiddiscovery

November 7, 2014

 

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Scientists  from Ohio State University’s College of Food,Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and partner institutions have come upwith a long-term plan to save North American ash from the emerald ash borer (EAB).  To share their plan and help fund the nextstep, team members have launched a crowdfunding campaign throughExperiment.com.

By providing a platform for scientists and backers toconnect, Experiment.com has helped raise over $1 million to fund diverse research projects. The emerald ash borer project is one of the university’s first programsto participate in Experiment.com as a new way to engage public support forresearch. The researchers are using social media and other communicationsoutlets to publicize their campaign and attract donors.

In the past 15 years the emerald ash borer has killedmillions of ash trees across the United States and Canada causing billions ofdollars in damages to private owners as well as local, state, and federal governments.The small green beetle was accidentally introduced from Asia, where it is notknown to cause widespread damage.  Infact, Asian ash species are able to kill most emerald ash borers that try toattack.  The secrets behind thesesuccessful Asian ash defenses are what the research project is working touncover.

“We’re in search of a long-term solution to the emerald ashborer problem in North America,” says Pierluigi Bonello, a Professor of PlantPathology at Ohio State and a senior scientist on the project. The goal of thecrowdfunded project is to identify resistance genes in Asian ash that could beused to breed North American ash resistant to the insect.  Planting resistant North American ash capableof surviving and reproducing on their own could help offset some of the massiveeconomic and ecological damages caused by the current EAB infestation. 

 

The team would like to use of state-of-the-art tools tocompare the genes involved in defense responses of EAB-resistant Asian treeswith those of susceptible North American trees. This promising approach hasalready received partial funding through the Ohio Agricultural Research andDevelopment Center. The crowdfunding campaign aims to share the research withthe public and raise the remaining $6,250. The campaign is active through November 20th, and so far 38backers have pledged support to the project.

Project Link: https://experiment.com/projects/can-we-save-ash-trees-from-the-invasive-emerald-ash-borer