Golden Nematode

Effective immediately, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is removing 45,562.067 acres from the golden nematode (GN) regulated area in Suffolk County, New York and refining the global positioning system (GPS) points for the descriptions of the regulated area in the town of Oyster Bay in Nassau County, New York. APHIS is removing these areas based on survey results and other criteria in the "Canada and United States Guidelines on Surveillance and Phytosanitary Actions for the Potato Cyst Nematodes, Globodera rostochiensis and Globodera pallida”.

Since 2010, APHIS, working closely with the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets (NYS AGM), has removed 1,186,693.79 acres from the GN-regulated area in New York. APHIS and NYS AGM have an active control and mitigation program in place to prevent GN from spreading from the remaining 101,955.27 acres, including 5,945 GN-infested acres in eight New York counties. The specific GN-regulated areas are on the APHIS website.

For the last seven decades, Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS) has been leading the fight against nematodes—invasive, microscopic worms that can destroy seasons' worth of crops. However, researchers had been working in a facility that lacked the infrastructure to keep pace with their innovative work. On August 1, 2019, thanks to a $1.2 million grant from New York State and another $400,000 in federal funding, CALS cut the ribbon on the new Golden Nematode Quarantine Facility, located on the Cornell campus in Ithaca, NY. The facility is the only research program in North America with expertise in biology, resistance breeding and management of potato-cyst nematodes. At the lab, Cornell scientists work in tandem with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agriculture Research Service (ARS).

GLOBAL is a five-year $3.2 million project funded by USDA. The project title is "Risk assessment and eradication of Globodera spp. in U.S. production of potato", with research focused on the potato cyst nematodes Globodera pallida (pale cyst nematode), G. rostochiensis (golden nematode), and the related species G. ellingtonae that has recently been found in Oregon and Idaho. GLOBAL stands for "Globodera Alliance", a group of 17 research, extension, and education professionals, located in Idaho, Oregon, New York, Canada, Scotland, and France. GLOBAL members include faculty from the University of Idaho, Oregon State University, Cornell University, US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, The James Hutton Institute, and the French National Institute for Agricultural Research.