Hewson Landscape Inc

It is metallic green and about a half-inch long. It will attack a wide variety of ash trees, wiping out huge swaths of wooded tracts and trees that shade many suburban neighborhoods. Ash trees are used to make furniture, tool handles, baseball bats, and other wood products. The beetle spends much of its early life feeding under the bark of the ash tree, so that by the time it is detected, it is usually too late to save an infested tree. Ash borer beetle larvae feed on the tissue of the tree, which weakens the tree and eventually kills it. One sign of infestation is damage from woodpeckers that feed on borer larvae. The ash borer is a really hard pest to detect in its early stages and really hard to study because of how it spends most of its life cycle. Emerging from the trunk of an ash tree, an emerald ash borer is infected with Beauveria bassiana, an insect-pathogenic fungus that may prove to be a valuable bio-control for this pest. The beetle can be spread when people transport infested firewood and nursery stock, and infested trees are often found along highways. A survey turned up a pattern of infestation that prompted state and federal quarantines restricting the movement of firewood, lumber, and logs from ash trees growing in the area. Crews in New York have been "girdling" ash trees by removing a 6-inch-wide rim of bark from around the tree to expose the wood. The girdled trees become attractive to the beetles, so that they leave other trees alone. Scientists and technicians have girdled 17 clusters of ash trees in and around Randolph and 120 single girdled trees, known as "sentinel trees," within about 5 miles of the epicenter. The trees will be cut down and carved up into sections to assess the level of infestation. Newly discovered infestations in other parts of New York and other states pose a challenge for regulators and researchers alike. This is a new habitat for them, and we don't know how late in the year they remain active. Findings showed that at least one of the wasps (T. planipennisi) had become established in three release sites and it is the most abundant species of the parasitoid wasps attacking EAB larvae a year after release. The fungus is the active ingredient in BotaniGard, a commercially available insecticide labeled for use against a variety of insects. Researchers think the fungus could be applied to infested trees as a first step before the wasps are released. Preliminary results show that it kills the beetles but leaves the wasps unharmed, but those studies are ongoing. The researchers have made rapid progress, but their efforts are a race against the clock, given the rate that the pest is spreading. If we can slow down the spread of the emerald ash borer and establish populations of natural enemies, it's possible we can create a kind of equilibrium whereby fewer trees are lost to the pest. As added insurance, a team has devised a procedure for putting ash tree budwood material into a "deep freeze" for future use. Using cryopreservation techniques that have been very effective for apple and sour cherry and have showed that dormant budwood can be safely stored in liquid nitrogen vapor for prolonged periods and later thawed for use in propagating elite clones or cultivars. Seed-storage methods can safeguard much of the diversity in North America's ash populations. There are selected ash cultivars with superior form and stress tolerance that never produce seeds-or that may have special characteristics useful in fighting EAB. For these trees, having a reliable method to preserve and propagate them in the future would be extremely valuable.