2018 ASHS Annual Conference

In 2014, the project entitled “Combating Rose Rosette Disease: Short-term and Long-term Approaches”, was funded by a NIFA Specialty Crop Research Initiative grant to address the growing impact of this disease on the rose industry. Rose breeders are searching for resistant germplasm that could be used to develop roses with resistance to RRD. To date, no cultivated rose has been confirmed resistant to the virus that causes this disease. An effort to reach out and seek public involvement to help accelerate the research was executed. A website (http://roserosette.org) was developed to serve as a clearinghouse of RRD information for the general public, but also to engage and recruit the public to assist in monitoring for RRD. This reporting tool that was launched in the 4^th quarter of 2017, aims to encourage the report of suspected RRD and the rose cultivars where these symptoms were observed. To date (3/15/2018), this reporting system has registered 197 reports submitted. 13 have been verified via visual (photograph), 143 are credible or plausible reports and 30 had been confirmed by PCR. This website and the reporting tool is being actively marketed at current time. We anticipate a continued increase in usage and recovery of valuable information that would inform and help to accelerate our efforts to discover current cultivars with resistance to RRD.