I can not understand how stopping research on RRD would benefit anyone? And why Congress should even care? Surely there isn't THAT much money going into it or we'd have better information about it. It's such a small niche to pick on.

This congress has picked on virtually everything there is to "starve the beast" and increase the tax breaks to those who pay their salaries. I guess they've already hit all the biggies and now figure they can choke eveyrthing else off.

Really? What the heck difference does it make to him?

I was curious about the bill and found this. I get that there's a lot of waste on ag subsidies, but still. The money spend on RRD is peanuts compared to all the corn/ethanol crap.

Jun 26, 2015

SOS

Washington, D.C.—Today, Rep. Matt Salmon (AZ-05) announced the Seventh Shrink our Spending Initiative bill focused on highlighting and cutting wasteful, taxpayer-funded programs. Upon introduction of his latest bill to eliminate federal funding for the Rose Rosette Disease Grant, Salmon released the following statement:

“Though there is nothing wrong with funding research on agricultural diseases, I believe that the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) must prioritize the research that will protect our agricultural security.

“This program is at best a government subsidy to the U.S. rose industry, which draws a healthy $400 million of the $2.81 billion wholesale shrub market. The industry had enough money to match the grant money awarded by the federal government; surely they could also afford to fully support their own mite research.”

Background: Rose Rosette Disease (RRD) is a mite borne viral disease that affects the U.S. landscape rose industry. In late 2014, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded $4.6 million to “minimize the effect” of rose rosette disease on garden roses. NIFA’s current priority initiatives include: global food security and hunger, climate change, sustainable energy, childhood obesity, and food safety. Cutting this program would save roughly 4.6 million dollars.

Issues:

Spending Cuts and Debt

*Bump*

No congressional actions since 8/25/15. Hopefully that means this bill has been effectively killed in committee....

https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/2943/all-actions

OK gang, this is a rose form. Not a political form. There are plenty of forms for politics.

I was asked to write a recommendation for the research. My main point was that universities needed to train more scientists in the area of plant viruses. It was my opinion that there was very little state of the art plant virus research being done in the U.S. up to that time.

Contrary to popular opinion, I am in favor of nongovernment funded RRV research on the basis that private industry will make every penny spent on research count. Government will spend money wrecklessly as it always does.

The government, in typical bureaucratic fashion, will waste, waste, and waste some more, my tax payer's dollar, on drawn out, cost overrun projects that hinder and delay progress toward a treatment/cure of RRV.

There's nothing like an issue hitting you directly, as RRV does the rose industry, to motivate you to proceed urgently and with results oriented determination in pursuing a solution.

Depending on the government has always led to delays, frustration, and mediocre results.

Less government leads to faster, better results.

Moses

The government provides the grant money, the universities (both public and private) provide the research and in doing so train the next generation of scientists (many of whom will then be hired by private industry).

A problem with industry funded research in the past is that the results were subject to what I will call industry censorship. i.e. some/many/most companies are not going to release research results that negatively affect their bottom line.

Ken, I don't see anything wrong with a discussion on a political nature so long as it's relevant to roses. If there is a forum where we can organize behind a cause that everyone can relate to it would be this one. There will always be differences of opinions, and political ones these days have become so divisive and toxic that people would rather plant a barefoot rose upside down than engage in political discourse, but I think this group can handle something on topic like the defunding of RRD research, especially when we know that roses are a multi million dollar cash crop for various sectors or the ag. business industrial complex. Sure, I knew that Moses was going to chime in strong and that someone like Henry would counter, but that's the nature of debate. It's our job after reading these exchanges to verify what we read and come up with our own conclusions before acting, or not acting, on them. Let's not get to the point where we black list any one topic all because it stirs things up. On a side note, I hold my breath on here more when I post something on the topic of spray/no spray because that's one topic that flares us up like nothing else. Interestingly, it's been those exchanges where I think I've learned the most about rosen culture and about our little social enclave.

Just shooting from the hip,

Adrian.

Depending on the government has always led to delays, frustration, and mediocre results.

Less government leads to faster, better results.

Moses

Like Medicare!!

Right, Moses?

Good pickup ^^^^ reesepbuttercup 6b-Utah.

As someone who works in healthcare, and has to sit through several meetings a year about properly billing things to Medicare and Medicaid, it's actually not a bad example - there's a lot of fraud going on. Both from providers and patients.

The government provides this money and then people view it as a bottomless well they can keep going to. The government thinks its' a bottomless well they can keep drawing from to hand out. Then the buckets start hitting the bottom and everyone panics because nothing got gone while everyone thought there wasn't any real 'deadline'.

I don't think the government should be banning RRV research - what happens when something jumps to apples and then we lose a major food crop in this country because we have nothing in the way of a think tank/plan/organization dedicated to plant viruses? They need to be involved, yes, but I don't think they should be taking the lead on this.

It's complicated because the rose industry doesn't exactly have a lot of cash to throw at research - even big companies have been struggling these last several years. Government grants can certainly alleviate that. But bureaucracy has earned its reputation for a reason and this is something that has 'deadlines' - both for roses and the industry, and for the amount of money the government has to hand out.

I get your sentiment, Ken. Unfortunately, some of these discussions begin, and people forget which branch of government is responsible for what, or insults get hurled at a political party, half of the nation... maybe more at this point. It quickly becomes unproductive when some go down into the mud instead of sticking with facts, analysis, or coming up with solutions. If only communications could stay true to the preservation of our roses, versus vociferously expressing one's political animus. It becomes old...we ALL have opinions...

As much as Iove my roses, rrd presents no threat to the public, its not a matter of food safety, etc., so what justifies a $400million taxpayer funded subsidy to the rose industry for rrd research?

ebharvey, from my reading of the above the cost of the RRD research is $4.6million. AC91z6 makes a valid point in that at the moment the RRmite is only attacking Rosa, but what if it should expand its host or mutate in some way to attack other plants in the rose family such as apples, pears or any number of the other members of this family, many of which have huge economic importance as well as contributing to our nation's food security?

If they can spend money to save The Bald Eagle, why not The Rose?

https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/STATUTE-101/pdf/STATUTE-101-Pg2038.pdf

This is an example of some very recent research from mainland China:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048357517305916

They report that a chemical can be used to activate the plant defense system against tobacco mosaic virus (TMV).

In the full paper they state the following:

"Acknowledgment
The work was supported financially by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31160374), the Scientific and Technological Planning Project of Guizhou
(No. QKH-JC [2017]1141), and initial funding of PhD (No. YBH-J [2016-7]). "

H. Kuska comment: Please note that they are producing a new PhD with their funding.

-------------------------------------------------------------

This is an example of how the University of Florida is planning on training a graduate student in the use of systemic acquired resistance to control rose rose virus.

"The graduate student will study the use of systemic acquired resistance inducer in synergy with predatory mites to control the spread of the disease. The student will also investigate plant, vector, and virus interactions as well as the changes in rose physiology due to RRV infection and systemic acquired resistance inducer."

https://www.entsoc.org/graduate-student-assistantship-0

Subjects shouldn't be censored just because this is a rose forum,IMO. In any case the absolutely MOST acrimonious discussion in my memory on this forum was one on soil amendment-yey or nay; one person left the forum after that'un! So I agree with Adrian. I am totally against government cuts to scientific research,since with this present administration I have no doubt that the money will end up either in the pockets of the present potus and his men, or else used on military spending.

It's not just roses. Other food crops belong to the Rosaceae family.

(per Wiki)-The rose family is arguably one of the six most economically important crop plant families includes apples, pears, quinces, medlars, loquats, almonds, peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, strawberries, raspberries, sloes, and roses among the crop plants belonging to the family.

So a lot more to be considered than just an ornamental flower.

Well, if Congress wants to save money, how about letting us import roses from abroad like we used to? They could charge an import fee and make money.

This might be a stupid question, but as roses are related to apples, granted I don't know how closely, is there any chance that RRD might mutate to one day infect apple trees? Just a thought.

Since the gov't introduced this scourge they need to keep finding research to fix it.

Rose Rosette Virus is a member of the genus Emaravirus. A very recent publication reported that a Emaravirus can infect blackberries.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28396285

If I am not mistaken, isnt the rose the national flower? Why is it of any less importance than the bald eagle? If the eagle can get grant money, why cant the national flower? Also, I am quite sure there are lots of things that get grant money that are of NO use at all to society. Wonder if they ever stopped to look at the size and scope of the rose industry? Hopefully, if nothing has been done on it since 2015, maybe it will die a slow, unnoticed death.

Judith

There are 100 different reasons to try and pass a bill like this, most of which are not nefarious.

1. Perhaps there is another government agency that has been provided funds specficially for RRD research and they don't want USDA to double the work/spending.

2. Maybe congress has other research at a higher priority and wants to ensure that RRD can't be a pet project for USDA.

3. Maybe congressional aides worked with the rose industry and have determined that there are some issues with working together at this stage.

4. Maybe congressional aides did bad research and fed the bosses bad information.

5. OMB has a shortfall and needs to restrict any "new" starts to recover and save the budget.

6. etc

Yikes Henry! That would be terrible. I live for blackberries. They're my favorite!