Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** in the last 20 years, epidemics…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** in the last 20 years, epidemics caused by fire blight pathogen erwinia amylovora caused losses of over $22 million per year in pear and apple production. If flowers aren't protected by spray applied antibiotics, blossom blight infections allow shoot blight infections with both leading to development of destructive fire blight cankers. Cankers are infected zones on wood bark which can kill more than 50% of trees in high density orchards by causing tree stem girdling. To control fire blight, growers apply copper in spring that is not always effective, antibiotics which can lead to resistance, biorational materials with inconsistent efficacy, and labor-intensive pruning removal of symptoms. This project's goals are to develop camera-robot system for canker mapping to speed up their manual pruning removal, determine biology and microbiome of cankers, screen for new biocontrol yeasts, determine efficacy of improved dormant copper and plant activator materials targeting canker viability, develop new antibiofilm enzymes and yeasts for blossom and shoot blight control, and conduct economic analyses of new control options resulting from project research objectives and research-driven results. Our cross-disciplinary team will use the latest technologies in robot engineering, genomics, transcriptomics, biochemistry, phytobiome, plant pathology and economics to provide growers with critically needed effective control options for all fire blight stages: cankers, blossom blight and shoot blight. To disseminate and implement new knowledge on e. Amylovora and comprehensive fire blight management deliverables, our project team will use modern bilingual extension programming and in-depth impact analyses encompassing english and spanish speaking agricultural communities.