Forty years ago, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service developed and currently operates the Resistance Screening Center near Asheville, North Carolina, as a service to both industry and university-based tree improvement programs and tree-seed exporting companies in the southern US, Mexico, and Central America. Seed lots from more than 15,000 selections of slash and loblolly pines have been evaluated for genetically-controlled resistance to fusiform rust and other diseases including pitch canker, dogwood anthracnose, and brown spot needle blight. The screening system uses a greenhouse-based artificial inoculation system with controlled density of inoculum from geographically diverse sources of the rust pathogen. Results are completed in 6–9 months and are reasonably well-correlated with field-based progeny tests. Operating costs of the Center are shared by both the USDA Forest Service and its clients. The technologically sophisticated methods and professional skills of the Center staff have been applied to facilitate and accelerate progress in region-wide timber production, scientific understanding of the fusiform rust pathosystem, and graduate education of forest geneticists and pathologists in universities.
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