Oak Disease Quarantine Expands to Two States

Sudden oak death quarantine rules will be expanded next month to include Oregon and Washington in addition to California, where the plant fungus began to spread in the 1990s and threatened the nation’s $13-billion nursery industry.

The change in federal rules, effective Jan. 10, isn’t expected to disrupt the nursery industry in Oregon, where nursery products generally rank first or second statewide among agricultural commodities every year and accounted for $775 million in sales last year.

Under the new rules, Oregon nurseries must be inspected for the sudden oak death fungus before plants or related material can be shipped to other states.

The peak shipping season begins in February and runs through May, but inspections conducted in 2004 will allow nurseries to ship material until they can be re-inspected next year, according to the Oregon Assn. of Nurseries.

Many nurseries will be able to ship plants until their next inspection in 2005.

Nursery operators in Oregon had hoped to avoid a federal quarantine after the Department of Agriculture decided against action last summer because growers and the state agreed to a comprehensive inspection program.

The fungus kills certain oak tree species and can be carried or affect other plants, including rhododendrons and azaleas, both extremely popular ornamental shrubs and a staple of the nursery industry nationwide and in Oregon.

It is unknown what area of the world gave rise to the sudden oak death fungus, but it was first spotted in Europe in 1993 and had spread to the San Francisco Bay Area by the mid-1990s, killing off large stands of oak trees.

It later infected nursery crops in the Los Angeles area that were shipped across the nation, prompting a federal quarantine on California.

Infected plant material from one of the largest nursery operations in the nation, Monrovia Growers in Southern California, was shipped to at least 11 states, including Oregon and Washington.

Katie Bloome, a Monrovia spokeswoman, said the nursery had taken steps to prevent any additional plant infection.

The sudden oak death outbreak surprised the industry and regulatory agencies because the fungus generally spreads through water and cannot survive the hot, arid climate of Southern California. It probably survived in irrigation and sprinkler systems.

California has formed a task force of scientific and government experts to track the disease, and Oregon State University is serving as a clearinghouse for prevention efforts by other states.

After the rule change was announced Thursday, Keith Warren, director of product development for J. Frank Schmidt & Son Co. in Boring, one of the state’s largest nurseries, told the Oregonian that out-of-state buyers appear confident that Oregon products were disease-free.

“I think there’s confidence in the market,” he told the Portland newspaper. “In the nursery trade, people have been aware of this disease for a number of years, and at this point all the Oregon nurseries producing stock have already been through testing.”