Sudden Oak Death

The general goal of the study is to explain and find out the natural phenomena that impacts dying trees in our area. The key elements we are investigating is the plant pathogen,Phytophthora ramorum and the trees that are being affected and the host,Umbellaria californica. This is significant since billions of trees are dying at a rapid pace every year due to a new pathogen that causes Sudden Oak Death. The pathogen is called Phytophthora ramorum and it was recently discovered in the year of 1995, which at this point has a high susceptibility to the species of oaks and tanoaks. Looking at the big picture, if we don't do something it's going to impact the overall health of the surrounding woodlands since if one tree falls, the other is one step …show more content…
The pathogen excels in environments where humidity is very high and decline when it’s very dry. According to Pests and Diseases Image library, the pathogen follows a strict development stage that starts with an infected leaf where chlamydospore are present . Then chlamydospore starts the germination process, thus forming sporangium in which zoospores develop and after some time, zoospores infect the leaves and the bark and the cycle repeats itself. The Pathogen attacks the phloem and the xylem of the plant, which causes the whole decline of the plant by developing canker sores thus yielding bleeding cankers in the process. After a short period of time, the plant experiences a rapid “dead” color all throughout, which causes the rapid sudden oak death . The pathogen can be hosted in numerous plants like Quercus agrifolia,Q. kellogii, Umbellaria californica, and so on, but in this study we are going to channel our efforts with the host Umbellaria californica …show more content…
For this experiment we collected Umbellaria californica or in other words California bay laurels in Pepperwood Preserve for the experiment. We collected samples from the same meadow in Pepperwood to dish out any uncertainties or error in our results. After that we placed them in water and put them in their specified light treatment which consisted of red,blue,white, and green.The light treatment will expose the leafs for five days of the light. After that we carefully selected leaves to expose them the plant pathogen(Phytophthora ramorum) and then we purposely let them sit on a high elevation in a clean sanitary classroom for seven day. After that we collected our data of the growth of necrosis and the frequency. With this experimental setup, it can be possible to answer the golden question, which is, “does the color of light impact the growth of the pathogen. This setup is limited only to the area of california bay laurels in pepperwood preserve since we only collected our samples