OSU’’s $3.2M war on potato pest

A leading genomicist, Dee Denver, from Oregon State University’s College of Science, is joining other scientists to find an earth-friendly approach to eliminating the crop-crunching pale cyst nematode and golden cyst nematode. The microscopic parasites burrow into the roots of potato plants, sucking out essential nutrients and reducing crop yields by up to 80 percent. The five-year, $3.2 million project, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), has chosen an international team of scientists from Oregon, Idaho, New York, Canada, France and Scotland to study the potato probing parasites. A second OSU courtesy faculty member, Inga Zasada, is a nematode expert with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service and says, “The nematode problem has a global reach… posing a significant threat to Northwest and U.S. potato industries.” More