Cooperative efforts contained spread of Pierce's disease and found genetic resistance

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An outbreak of Pierce's disease of grapevine in the Temecula Valley in the late 1990s was one in a decades-long series of sporadic appearances of this infection in California.However, the new outbreak was qualitatively different because of the rapidity with which it spread in the vineyard and its appearance almost simultaneously at distant locations.The causative agent of Pierce's disease is the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa, and the distinct characteristics of the Temecula Valley outbreak were traced to the establishment of a new insect vector in California, the glassy-winged sharpshooter.Intensive and collaborative efforts among government agencies, industry and research institutions over 15 years have successfully contained the disease, and given scientists time to discover promising long-term potential solutions through genetic resistance. Pierce's disease (PD) was not new to California in 1999, when its characteristic scorching symptoms suddenly and severely devastated several hundred acres of grapevines in the Temecula Valley, affecting a quarter of the region's vineyards.In the early 1880s, PD, then referred to as Anaheim disease, decimated 30,000 acres of vines near Anaheim and Pomona.Newton B. Pierce, a special agent of the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, responded to this event as the first professional plant pathologist in California.He skillfully eliminated explanations other than disease but was not able to identify the causative agent.In the late 1880s, the disease damaged vineyards in Napa County, and there were severe outbreaks in Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s.Between 1994 and 2000, grapevines on over 1,000 acres in Northern California were affected, resulting in $30 million in damage (Webster and Nation 2000).The causative agent of PD was long thought to be a virus.The disease actually is caused by a strain of the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa (Davis et al. 1978).Strains of this bacterium also inflict damage on many other plant species, including almond, citrus, elm, maple, oak, oleander, stone fruit and sycamore.The 1999 outbreak in the Temecula Valley was unique, alarming and characterized by rapid and long-distance spread of PD in the vineyard, resulting from the establishment of a new vector in California, the glassywinged sharpshooter (GWSS; Homalodisca vitripennis).Further spread of GWSS would place at risk California's $3 billion grape crop, $60 billion in associated activity, and $3 billion in fruit, nut and ornamental crops. Epidemiology of PDX. fastidiosa is transmitted in the field by xylem-feeding insects, especially Online: http://californiaagriculture.ucanr.edu/ landingpage.cfm?article=ca.v068n04p134&fulltext=yes

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