SLAYING THE DRAGON!
An Update on Rose Rosette Disease with Dr. John Hammond
Have you lost a favorite rose to Rose Rosette Disease (RRD)? You are not alone! Thousands of rose lovers have shovel pruned a beloved plant that developed the telltale abnormal growth and decline indicative of RRD. Rose lovers everywhere are anticipating the day when this dragon is under control!
Join the Potomac Rose Society on Sunday, February 16, 2025, 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm to learn about the latest research efforts to control Rose Rosette Disease from Dr. John Hammond, Research Plant Pathologist at the USDA Agricultural Research Service. John will discuss promising developments in resistance breeding and other strategies for combating RRD. He will also share research about other viruses that affect roses.
Please Note: Only those who register for this event will receive a Zoom link. Registration will remain open through February 15.
Born and raised in Cambridge, England, John gained his BSc in Agricultural Botany at the University of Reading before going to the John Innes Institute and the University of East Anglia in Norwich for his PhD studies. There, he purified and characterized several viruses infecting Plantago species. John then moved to the United States for a post-doctoral position at Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN), improving purification methods for barley yellow dwarf virus, and preparing high quality polyclonal antisera, which were utilized by others for epidemiological surveys and to evaluate cereal cultivar sensitivity to barley yellow dwarf infection.
In 1982 he joined the USDA Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, MD, in what is now the Florist and Nursery Plants Research Unit of the U.S. National Arboretum. Dr. Hammond is a national and international authority on viruses affecting ornamental plants, using a range of techniques to identify, characterize, purify, detect and differentiate viruses, especially new and emerging viruses affecting ornamental plants. He has also advanced basic understanding of virus genome structure, accumulation, and spread, and the utilization of plant viruses as tools for protein expression and to understand gene function. John has many national and international collaborators, including scientists from Korea, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Over the past few years Dr. Hammond has worked with rose rosette virus and other emaraviruses emerging in a number of ornamental and landscape woody plants, to examine their relationships with their host plants and their eriophyid mite vectors, in collaboration with an ARS eriophyid mite expert. He is the lead editor of the newly published 3rd edition of the APS Compendium of Rose Diseases and Pests.
ARS Consulting rosarians will earn one credit towards recertification for attending this program. A recording of the zoom presentation will be posted to the MEMBERS ONLY section of the PRS website.
Banner Photo Credit: https://roserosette.org/ , https://www.facebook.com/CombatingRoseRosette?ref=embed_page
