Plant Board Expands Emerald Ash Borer Quarantine To Include 27 Counties In State

Oct 04, 2016

By Ryan McGeeney

The Arkansas State Plant Board moved last week to expand the emerald ash borer quarantine to include 27 counties throughout the state. The expansion adds eight new counties to the quarantine list, including Randolph County, where the presence of the invasive pest was recently confirmed, as well as the five counties that border it within the state: Fulton, Sharp, Lawrence, Greene and Clay counties.

Pulaski and Perry counties have also been added to the list of quarantined counties.

The emerald ash borer, an invasive beetle first detected in Arkansas in 2014, has now been confirmed in 12 counties in Arkansas, including Randolph, Saline, Hot Spring, Clark, Dallas, Cleveland, Nevada, Ouachita, Calhoun, Bradley, Columbia and Union counties.

The expanded quarantine zone effectively creates a county-wide buffer between the two areas in which the beetle has been confirmed — the block of 11 counties in south central Arkansas, as well as Randolph County in the northeast — and the state’s remaining 48 counties in which the beetle has not been detected.

It is illegal to transport certain items from within the quarantine zones to areas outside the zones. According to the Arkansas Department of Agriculture, quarantined items include firewood of any hardwood species, as well as ash tree products including:

Nursery stock
Green lumber with bark attached
Living, dead, cut or fallen logs
Pulpwood, stumps, roots, branches
Mulch and composted or uncomposted chips greater than 1 inch in diameter

Randolph County Cooperative Extension Service office chair Mike Andrews said the State Plant Board informed him of the beetle’s confirmed presence in his county in early August, but that he hadn’t heard from any residents who were concerned they might be seeing an infestation.

“I’ve put out information with the local media — newspaper and radio,” Andrews said. “If they think they might have a problem, we’re ready to get them all the information they need.”

Signs of infestation include:

Multiple jagged holes excavated by woodpeckers feeding on ash borer larvae
Distinctive D-shaped exit holes left by emerging adult beetles
Canopy dieback from top of tree
Sprouts arising from the base of the tree
Larval tunnels or galleries immediately under the bark of dying ash trees

Chandler Barton, a forest health specialist with the Arkansas Forestry Commission, said the AFC and the State Plant Board are currently developing control measures for the beetle by establishing parasitoid wasp populations at three sites in Arkansas, including Logoly State Park, White Oak State Park and on a private property near Arkadelphia.

“It typically takes about three years to establish the wasp population,” Barton said. “On the third year following the first introduction, we sample for the wasp to determine establishment and monitor its effect on the emerald ash borer.”

Barton said the wasps were imported from Asia to a facility operated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in Brighton, Michigan. This facility raises the wasps for biocontrol purposes and shares them with partners across the United States, he said.

Source: uaex.edu

Video: Why Your Food Future Could be Trapped in a Seed Morgue

In a world of PowerPoint overload, Rex Bernardo stands out. No bullet points. No charts. No jargon. Just stories and photographs. At this year’s National Association for Plant Breeding conference on the Big Island of Hawaii, he stood before a room of peers — all experts in the science of seeds — and did something radical: he showed them images. He told them stories. And he asked them to remember not what they saw, but how they felt.

Bernardo, recipient of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, has spent his career searching for the genetic treasures tucked inside what plant breeders call exotic germplasm — ancient, often wild genetic lines that hold secrets to resilience, taste, and traits we've forgotten to value.

But Bernardo didn’t always think this way.

“I worked in private industry for nearly a decade,” he recalls. “I remember one breeder saying, ‘We’re making new hybrids, but they’re basically the same genetics.’ That stuck with me. Where is the new diversity going to come from?”

For Bernardo, part of the answer lies in the world’s gene banks — vast vaults of seed samples collected from every corner of the globe. Yet, he says, many of these vaults have quietly become “seed morgues.” “Something goes in, but it never comes out,” he explains. “We need to start treating these collections like living investments, not museums of dead potential.”

That potential — and the barriers to unlocking it — are deeply personal for Bernardo. He’s wrestled with international policies that prevent access to valuable lines (like North Korean corn) and with the slow, painstaking science of transferring useful traits from wild relatives into elite lines that farmers can actually grow. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But he’s convinced that success starts not in the lab, but in the way we communicate.

“The fact sheet model isn’t cutting it anymore,” he says. “We hand out a paper about a new variety and think that’s enough. But stories? Plants you can see and touch? That’s what stays with people.”

Bernardo practices what he preaches. At the University of Minnesota, he helped launch a student-led breeding program that’s working to adapt leafy African vegetables for the Twin Cities’ African diaspora. The goal? Culturally relevant crops that mature in Minnesota’s shorter growing season — and can be regrown year after year.

“That’s real impact,” he says. “Helping people grow food that’s meaningful to them, not just what's commercially viable.”

He’s also brewed plant breeding into something more relatable — literally. Coffee and beer have become unexpected tools in his mission to make science accessible. His undergraduate course on coffee, for instance, connects the dots between genetics, geography, and culture. “Everyone drinks coffee,” he says. “It’s a conversation starter. It’s a gateway into plant science.”