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University of Minnesota researchers are studying the use of fungi as a tool to control invasive buckthorn, a problematic species that crowds out native plants and persistently degrades forests in the Midwest and Northeast.
Currently, the best control for common and glossy buckthorn is chemical herbicides, which are not always appropriate for ecologically sensitive sites. The research team set out to develop a new option to control common buckthorn using a fungal pathogen.
Funding for this project was provided by the University of Minnesota’s Minnesota Invasive Terrestrial Plants and Pests Center, supported by the Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources.
New research, recently published in Forests, reports the findings of fungi collected from dying buckthorn at 19 sites across Minnesota and Wisconsin.
They found:
•120 fungal species were collected from dying buckthorn.
•46 of those species are known to be canker or root-rot pathogens of woody plants.
•Studies are underway to evaluate these 46 species for their ability to cause disease when inoculated into healthy common buckthorn. The researchers plan to identify the most pathogenic species.
“Our survey of dying buckthorn reveals a considerable diversity of naturally occurring fungi associated with buckthorn decline,” said lead author Ryan Franke, a graduate student in the College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. “This research is the important first step in developing a fungal-based control, or mycoherbicide, for invasive common buckthorn.”
Future testing and larger field studies will demonstrate whether these fungi can be strategically used to control populations of invasive common buckhorn in Minnesota.
Source: University of Minnesota