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New rust in Florida found in same spot infected last year
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By Marilyn Cummins, Editor
StopSoybeanRust.com
4/11/2005 -- 4 p.m. CST -- Diligent scouting paid off last Thursday for Florida officials, when the same small patch of kudzu in Citra, Fla., that was positive for soybean rust last November popped up with active rust on new regrowth. That makes three Florida counties with sites positive for soybean rust this year -- this re-infestation in Marion County, plus earlier finds in Pasco and Hernando -- counties that were not known to be infected in 2004.
Confirmation was made Friday of the samples from Marion County, which inland to the north and east of the two counties where soybean rust was discovered on February 23 and March 21, 2005. Rust was not found in either Pasco or Hernando County last year.
"The latest site is on a dirt road where you can find little pockets of kudzu," said Robert Leahy, plant pathologist with the Florida Department of Agriculture. He said that Jim Walker, the Cooperative Agricultural Pest Survey inspector who brought in the samples, "visits those sites quite often, on a weekly basis. Marion County has been visited on a regular basis every since it (rust) was found there in 2004."
"It makes sense that it was found in an area with all that old foliage there," Leahy said. "The regrowth is probably getting reinfected" from the infection found last year on old-growth kudzu in the same spot, he said. He described the area as a woodsy, semi-residential part of the county, with the infected spot being in a rather protected spot behind some buildings. It had been scouted a few times since the find last November, but very little new growth was present until last week.
"Once new growth showed up, rust was back," Leahy said.
"Huge site" of kudzu rust-free so far
Leahy said he is amazed that soybean rust has not yet been found at a "huge site" of kudzu in Marion County dubbed the "Anthony Site" after the township where it's located.
"Kudzu is all over the hillsides of the quarry areas there on two sides of a four-lane highway (U.S. Highway 441)," he said. With all the traffic and wind, he said he would expect soybean rust to surface there. Scouting of the site has not revealed any yet, however.
A map on the Florida Asian Soybean Rust Web site shows all finds to date of the disease in Florida, the only U.S. state with rust found to be present in 2005. These finds have been confirmed by the Florida Division of Plant Industry and University of Florida-Institute of Food and Agricultural Science Department of Plant Pathology personnel using morphological and PCR techniques, according to text on the site.
The USDA Soybean Rust Observation Map now shows the third Florida county coded in red, but the national commentary has not yet been updated to reflect the third positive find.
Several counties in seven states in the South and Southeast are coded "green" on the national map, either indicating they have been scouted and found to be free of rust so far, or that sentinel plots are up and growing in those counties.
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