USDA announces victory in 20-year battle against plum pox virus

U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary for Marketing and Regulatory Programs Greg Ibach, announced the news at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., last week.

“Today, our 20-year fight against plum pox disease is officially over,” Ibach said. “Working with our partners, we’ve eliminated this disease and protected the United States’ $6.3 billion stone fruit industry.”

No other countries where plum pox disease is known to occur have successfully eradicated the disease. Plum pox does not kill infected trees outright; it causes severe yield losses and greatly reduces the marketability of stone fruit. The virus spreads over short distances by aphids and over long distances via the movement of infected nursery stock or by grafting infected buds onto healthy trees.

The disease was first detected in Pennsylvania in 1999. It was found in Michigan and New York in 2006. From the beginning, the plum pox virus eradication program was a cooperative effort among U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and Agricultural Research Service, departments of agriculture in impacted states, the Tuscarora Nation, industry, academia, growers, and homeowners. The program included collecting and testing plant samples, removing diseased and suspect trees, using plum pox virus–tolerant plants, and temporarily banning the planting of susceptible stone fruit varieties.

APHIS and its cooperators eradicated the disease from Pennsylvania and Michigan in 2009 and western New York in 2012. By the end of 2018, they completed three consecutive years of stone fruit field surveys in eastern New York—the last remaining quarantined area in the United States—with no further detections, putting eradication in reach.

To ensure the United States remains free of plum pox virus, APHIS has put in place a strong safeguarding program that includes ongoing monitoring for the disease in states where stone fruits are produced, science-based import regulations to prevent the disease’s reentry via imported nursery stock and propagative material, and continued cooperation with Canada to help prevent plum pox virus incursions from that country.

Press release