The National Clean Plant Network (NCPN) is in charge of providing U.S. growers with an important source of safe and sustainable plant material. CEOS's Shadi Attalah and a team of researchers undertook an economic study on the importance of the NCPN’s use of pathogen-tested foundation plant stocks in safeguarding specialty crop varieties in the United States. Shadi and other agricultural economists partnered with plant pathologists, extension educators, specialty crop growers and regulators for the study to investigate the impacts of certain diseases caused by the graft-transferrable pathogens and to estimate the return on investment of the NCPN’s work in helping to mitigate those diseases. Their findings reinforce incentives for the NCPN to continue to use clean planting material, quantify the benefits of NCPN centers, aid the development of disease management solutions that are not only ecologically sound, but profit driven, and perhaps most importantly, produce solutions that are marketable to growers.
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Fuchs, M., Almeyda, C. V., Al Rwahnih, M., Attalah, S., Cieniwicz, E., Farrar, K., Foote, W., Golino, D. A., Gómez, M., Harper, S., Kelly, M., Martin, R., Martinson, T., Osman, F., Park, K., Scharlau, V., Smith, R., Tzanetakis, I. E., Vidalakis, G., & Welliver, R. (Accepted/In press). Economic studies reinforce efforts to safeguard specialty crops in the United States. Plant disease. https://doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-05-20-1061-FE