At The University of Delaware, our faculty member Tom Evans and his graduate student Danielle Novick are part of a large group across the country investigating rose rosette disease, the virus, the mite, and the roses. Researchers are looking into breeding for resistance, as well as increasing our understanding of how the disease develops and spreads. They are doing good work! The post below was from a meeting last week (Nov 10 and 11) sharing results and strategies for the future!
"Plant pathologists see beauty in all that is disease. This is a wreath composed of rose rosetted branches from the RRD resistance evaluation block in Delaware that was made by Danielle Novick. She is the graduate student working with Tom Evans at the University of Delaware who is evaluating these blocks for RRD resistance. Unfortunately many of the roses that we are evaluating there are showing very nice symptoms. There are still many without symptoms. Thus there is hope that one of the roses still looking good will turn out to be resistant to this disease. Thus far we have collected data on ~650 roses and only ~40 still have not come down with RRD." K. Ong
Check their progress at: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=combating%20rose%20rosette
NFG 11/15/2016
