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CapitalPress.com
May 8, 2015
Idaho
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Potato growers file lawsuit
against PCN quarantine
By SEAN ELLIS
Capital Press
John O’Connell/Capital Press
University of Idaho Extension seed potato pathologist Phil Nolte
reflects on his career from his office in Idaho Falls, during his
second to last day before retirement on April 29. UI has offered
Nolte’s job of superintendent of its Tetonia Research & Extension
Center to an internal candidate and is seeking someone to fill his
faculty position.
University of Idaho
filling key ag positions
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
IDAHO FALLS — Uni-
versity of Idaho has made
an offer to an internal can-
didate to run its Tetonia Re-
search & Extension Center,
said College of Agricultural
and Life Sciences Dean John
Foltz.
UI Extension seed potato
pathologist Phil Nolte, who
had served as the rural re-
search facility’s superinten-
dent since February of 2011,
retired on April 30, following
24 years of serving the spud
industry with the university.
UI officials say they hope
to close the application pro-
cess for Nolte’s replacement
by June 1 and have the po-
sition filled by August, sep-
arating Tetonia supervisory
responsibilities to avoid over-
whelming their new hire.
Foltz said UI has also made
an offer to a candidate to serve
as a new area extension econ-
omist and anticipates making
an announcement within a
few days. The master’s-level
position will serve a 100 per-
cent extension role and will
be tasked with duties such as
completing production cost
studies, analyzing the finan-
cial state of Idaho agriculture
and running farm manage-
ment schools.
Foltz said UI Extension
economist Paul Patterson,
who will retire in June, has
been taking on many of those
responsibilities.
“One of their focuses is to
work with our county faculty
and get them up to speed on
things related to economics
and working with producers,”
Foltz said.
Foltz said the college is
also seeking approval to ap-
point a search committee to
find a direct replacement for
Patterson. It would be a Ph.D.
position with a 70 percent
emphasis on extension and a
30 percent focus on research.
Patterson said he has ten-
tative plans to continue com-
pleting a cost-of-production
analysis for the potato indus-
try, at least for one more year.
“My focus has always
been to help producers and
clientele solve problems,”
Patterson said. “Because of
that focus, I think I’ve built
some pretty good relation-
ships with the producers and
commodity groups, partic-
ularly potatoes, barley and
sugar beets.”
Nolte was regarded as a
leading international expert
on bacterial ring rot in pota-
toes, Foltz said.
“We’re going to look for
somebody who has similar
training and education to
serve the industry,” Foltz said.
Nolte has helped the spud
industry cope with emerging
disease threats since he start-
ed with UI in 1991. Shortly
after his hiring, Nolte said
the potato industry was ill
prepared for fusarium dry rot
that could no longer be con-
trolled by the major class of
fungicides used to manage
it. Nolte led an educational
campaign on managing for
fungicide resistance. A while
later, he had to deal with
potato virus Y developing
chemical resistance and be-
coming better acclimated to
Idaho’s climate.
In recent years, he’s
helped the industry respond
to the arrival of zebra chip
disease.
Don Thill, UI’s director
of the Idaho Agricultural
Experiment Station, said
the state is once again fully
funding the Tetonia facility,
which was tapped for clo-
sure during the recession and
spared thanks to investments
by Idaho commodity groups.
Thill said UI has upgraded
equipment at the facility,
done electrical work, made
irrigation system improve-
ments, overhauled buildings
and added a new equipment
storage facility.
Thill said Tetonia provides
a crucial high-elevation re-
search environment for breed-
ing trials and is home to de-
velopment of foundation seed
for commercial potato, barley,
wheat and oat planting.
BOISE — A group of po-
tato growers in East Idaho
affected by a federal pale
cyst nematode quarantine
has filed an administrative
lawsuit that seeks to over-
turn it.
The lawsuit claims the
PCN program has failed to
comply with the legal re-
quirements of several fed-
eral acts and that state and
federal regulators have en-
forced the regulations in an
ad hoc manner.
“The PCN program and
regulations were put in
place without proper no-
tice to or input from the ap-
propriate stakeholders,” a
joint news release from the
growers stated. “As a result,
(plaintiffs) have been bur-
dened by the arbitrary and
capricious manner in which
the PCN program has been
handled in Idaho.”
The lawsuit was filed
April 28 in federal court in
Boise and names USDA’s
Animal and Plant Health
Inspection Service and the
Idaho State Department of
Agriculture as defendants.
The lawsuit was filed by
a group of 15 potato farm-
ers, landlords, packaging
sheds and ranchers from the
Shelley area impacted by the
quarantine, put in place fol-
lowing the discovery in 2006
of a potato field infested with
PCN.
PCN is a tiny worm that
feeds off potato plant roots
and can reduce yields in high
numbers. It is considered a
quarantine pest by more than
80 nations.
Stephanie
Mickelsen,
one of the plaintiffs, said
the producers tried in vain
to get regulators to make
changes to the program and
filed the lawsuit as a last
resort.
“We’ve run out of op-
tions,” she said. “This was
not our first choice. This was
our last choice.”
Spokeswomen for APHIS
and ISDA said their agencies
couldn’t comment on pend-
ing litigation.
The 38-page complaint
alleges APHIS failed to com-
ply with its legal obligations
under the National Environ-
mental Policy Act, Plant Pro-
tection Act and Administra-
tive Procedure Act.
“APHIS’ ad hoc and ev-
er-changing protocols have
put, and will continue to put,
fields owned or farmed by
plaintiffs into a circuitous
and undefined state of reg-
ulation for an undefined pe-
riod of time,” the complaint
states.
It says the federal agency
“has applied and continues
to apply ad hoc and impos-
sible-to-satisfy conditions on
plaintiffs” and “continues to
change and add to the ad hoc
conditions it has placed on
plaintiffs without a basis in
law or fact to do so.”
The complaint asks for
both APHIS’ and ISDA’s
Fungus may become widespread if more cool, wet weather arrives this spring
By JOHN O’CONNELL
Capital Press
IDAHO FALLS, Idaho —
A University of Idaho Ex-
tension cereals pathologist
is worried about the early ar-
rival of stripe rust in winter
wheat in western and south-
central Idaho and northern
Utah.
Juliet Marshall said stripe
rust — a destructive fungal
pathogen of grain that can
be carried long distances
by wind — was discovered
April 29 at the UI’s Parma
Research & Extension Cen-
ter. It was evenly distributed
throughout a winter wheat
field.
On April 30, a crop con-
sultant discovered stripe rust
in a commercial winter wheat
field in Filer, Idaho.
“Right now it’s only
showing up in small areas,
but I fully expect it to be
widespread,” Marshall said.
The disease was also re-
cently discovered in three
winter wheat lines at Utah
State University’s Small
Grains Research facility.
David Hole, a wheat breeder
at the Logan, Utah, research
facility, said this season
promises to be ideal for eval-
uating experimental lines for
stripe rust resistance, though
growers who irrigate could
face a challenge.
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“When it arrives this
early, we still have a lot
of cool, potentially wet-
ter weather ahead,” Hole
said. “If there’s an inocu-
lum source and susceptible
lines, there’s the potential
to have significant infec-
tions before things turn hot
enough to turn it off.”
Marshall said stripe rust
is also expected to be severe
in Washington, where it was
found in January. It’s already
widespread in Oregon and
California.
Marshall said Idaho’s
winter wheat crops are
nearing the flowering stage,
when applications are pro-
hibited by fungicide labels.
In spring wheat, Marshall
advises growers through-
out Idaho to spray a fungi-
cide along with their herbi-
cide applications if they’ve
planted susceptible varieties
— including Bullseye, Jef-
ferson, Klasic, Snow Crest,
UI Winchester, WB-Palo-
ma, WestBred 936, Penawa-
wa, UI Pettit, UI Stone and
Alturas.
Some of the lines that have
shown stripe rust resistance
in UI trials include Cabernet,
Dayn, LCS Star, SY Basalt,
WB 9229, WB 9411, WB
9668, Seahawk and Alpowa.
Marshall said Idaho had
just a few late-season stripe
rust cases near Ashton last
season and experienced
its last outbreak in 2011.
She believes a mild win-
ter helped stripe rust gain
a foothold this season, and
overwinter in Washington,
Oregon, California and pos-
sibly parts of Idaho.
She said Idaho’s stripe
rust infections typically don’t
surface until late May, and
the early arrival could cause
more extensive crop damage.
Spores compete for plant
John O’Connell/Capital Press
University of Idaho Extension cereals pathologist Juliet Marshall
discusses the recent discovery of stripe rust infections in Parma
and Filer, Idaho. Plants infected with the fungal disease are pic-
tured on her computer monitor.
nutrients and can cut wheat
yields in half and reduce ker-
nel size. She said growers
may need to make an extra
fungicide application to pro-
tect their crops. She advises
growers who discover infec-
tions before spraying fungi-
cides to apply triazole-based
products, which are more
costly but have a curative ef-
fect on stripe rust.
Marshall plans to begin
scouting UI trial plots and
growers’ fields for stripe rust,
which is easily detectable by
chalky, bright-orange spores.
She believes heavy rainfall
that damaged grain late last
summer resulted in signifi-
cantly more volunteer plants
in fields, which provide a
“bridge” to carry diseases
such as stripe rust and barley
yellow dwarf virus into the
next crop.
Marshall said the mild
winter has also stressed win-
ter grains by triggering them
to break dormancy before ir-
rigation water became avail-
able, making them more sus-
ceptible to disease.
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PCN rules to be vacated
and it asks the court to “im-
mediately end the quaran-
tine and regulation of all
fields owned or farmed by
plaintiffs.”
The complaint claims
APHIS failed to conduct a
proper environmental anal-
ysis as required by NEPA
of how its use of methyl
bromide, a pesticide used
to eradicate certain pests,
could impact the environ-
ment.
APHIS’ applications of
this pesticide has caused
“significant disruption to
plaintiffs’ farm operations,
has made farm crops tox-
ic and unsellable and has
caused disease and death to
livestock owned by multiple
plaintiffs,” the complaint
alleges.
Walter Bithell, plaintiffs’
attorney, said the agency
should have been aware of
new scientific information
that shows residue from the
pesticide can harm certain
crops, primarily hay, grown
after it is applied.
“It was the responsibility
of APHIS to know that,” he
said.
Stripe rust shows up in Idaho wheat
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“The PCN program and regulations were put
in place without proper notice to or input from
the appropriate stakeholders.”
19-2/#5
19-1/#4
This file photo shows an exam-
ple of a strip rust infection in
winter wheat. A crop consultant
discovered stripe rust in a
commercial winter wheat field
in Filer, Idaho.
Idaho ranks
No. 3 in milk
production
BOISE, Idaho (AP) —
Idaho was the third highest
milk producing state last year,
behind California and Wis-
consin.
The U.S. Department of
Agriculture says Idaho cows
produced about 13.9 billion
pounds of milk in 2014.
The Idaho Press-Tribune
reports that’s an increase from
13.4 billion pounds in 2013
and helped Idaho take the No.
3 spot back from New York.
California is the top pro-
ducer with more than 42 bil-
lion pounds of milk, and Wis-
consin comes in second with
more than 27 billion pounds.
Idaho had 575,000 head
of milk cows in 2014 that
each produced an average of
24,000 pounds of milk.