Statement of the
American Phytopathological Society
Submitted to the
Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development,
And Related Agencies
Committee on Appropriations
United States Senate

April 23, 2001

The American Phytopathological Society (APS) appreciates the opportunity to provide the Subcommittee with our recommendations for fiscal year 2002 appropriations for essential research programs administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The APS represents more than 5,000 scientists and practitioners of plant pathology. The APS promotes the health of plants and their products in sustainable agricultural, landscape, and forest ecosystems through environmentally sound and cost-effective approaches to assure a safe, abundant, and reliable supply of food, feed, and fiber.

For the Fiscal Year (FY) 2002 agricultural appropriations bill, our top priorities are to increase funding for the USDA National Research Initiative (NRI) by 15 percent and, more specifically, to increase funding by $5 million for microbial genomics, especially genomics of microbial pathogens, within the NRI and within the Agricultural Research Service (ARS). The NRI provides critical support to individual investigators for basic, fundamental research. In addition to our top priorities, we urge the Subcommittee to maintain the $120 million in funding for the Initiative for Future Agriculture and Food Systems (IFAFS) as the IFAFS program provides support for microbial genomics as well. The IFAFS focuses on providing support to multi-institutional, multidisciplinary research. The NRI and the USDA microbial genomics programs are essential to plant disease management in the future.

The NRI has been the primary source of federal funds awarded competitively for research on plant diseases and their management since its formation in 1991 as the flagship competitive grants program of the USDA. Within the USDA, the NRI is particularly valuable and unique as it supports research focused on the fundamental understanding of plant diseases that serves as the foundation for applied research for plant disease management. The ability of the NRI to support this fundamental work is in jeopardy as the costs of modern-day research in the biological sciences has skyrocketed in recent years and funding for the NRI has not kept pace with these costs. While funding for research has increased significantly over the past 10 years and in some cases has doubled during that period, funding for the NRI has remained essentially flat and, for FY 2001, funding was reduced by $14 million, with much of this decrease occurring in the plant sciences. A report released by the National Academy of Sciences in 2000 again recommends that funding for the NRI be increased to the level authorized in 1991, which is five times its current level of $106 million. Because of the reduced funding for plant sciences, the NRI was unable to support critical genomics research.

The NRI has supported many significant scientific and technical breakthroughs. Some of the accomplishments funded by the NRI include:

Ø The first cloning of a plant gene responsible for recognition and rejection of a microbial plant pathogen by the pant and now known to be one of a family of genes with counterparts responsible for recognition and rejection of infectious microbial agents by certain human and animal tissues;

Ø Identification of the harpin protein responsible for a generic resistance response in plants and approved in 2001 by the EPA as a natural plant-pathogen product now being sold under the trade name “Messenger”; and

Ø Discovery of a gene expressed uniquely in roots and responsible for the widespread susceptibility of plants to root knot nematodes that is now providing us with an entirely new method of developing crop plants with genetic resistance to these pests.

In spite of these and other accomplishments, we are deeply concerned that because of flat funding, our discipline, so critical to assuring a safe and secure food supply, is being left behind both by the fast-pace of change in agriculture and the revolution in the biological sciences. New plant disease problems continue to emerge while the older problems continue to threaten the efficiency and productivity of American farms or keep our farmers locked into the use of pesticides.

Genomics has opened entirely new vistas for improvements in human, animal, and plant health. Plant pathology is poised along with our contemporaries in the medical and veterinary fields to take advantage of the new information on sequences of genomes. However, still missing in this explosion of information on genome sequences is information on the sequences of genomes of our most important plant pathogens. Of some 100 microbial genomes (other than viruses) that have been sequenced now, only one plant pathogen, a bacterial pathogen of citrus, has been completely sequenced, and this work was done in Brazil. Because of the small size of most microbial genomes, sequencing can be done inexpensively and quickly. With $5 million devoted to the sequencing of microbial genomes and, particularly, to plant pathogens, we could begin to revolutionize plant pathology. Once we have the sequences of the most important plant pathogens, it will advance significantly our efforts to discern the function of the genes (i.e., functional genomics).

The availability of information on both genome sequences and the function of genes for a select and representative list of plant pathogens would open entirely new approaches to understanding, managing, and even predicting plant disease outbreaks and epidemics just as is now happening for medicine. Such information can also improve diagnostics in cases where phytosanitary laws are used as trade barriers and help authorities track down any bioterrorist release of a notorious plant pathogen. The APS is in the process now of prioritizing the plant pathogens for which sequences are needed. Our goal is to select those pathogens that would be representative of all plant pathogens from a practical and scientific standpoint.

We recognize that the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Health are investing in microbial genomics. We appreciate, greatly, the support from these agencies. However, the focus of the microbial programs in the other agencies is not on agriculturally important plant pathogens. We believe that the USDA can and should play a leading role in microbial genomics, especially as it relates to plant pathogens.

We, strongly, urge you to include $5 million for microbial genomics and a 15 percent increase for the NRI in the FY 2002 agricultural appropriations bill. These programs will assist in our effort to maintain healthy plants so that we have a safe and secure food supply.

Thank you for this opportunity to present our views.