Experiences of ash dieback in Norway

Ari M. Hietala, Volkmar Timmermann, Isabella Børja & Halvor Solheim Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute. PO Box 115, 1431 Ås, Norway: ari.hietala@skogoglandskap.no Owing to the Gulf Stream, the northernmost European populations of several tree species are found in Norway. Common ash (Fraxinus excelsior), the only native ash species in Norway, is present in the lowlands in the southeastern part with continental climate and in southern and southwestern coastal regions with North Atlantic climate up to Central Norway. The current standing volume of ash in Norway is ca 3 mill m3 (broadleaved trees in total 220 mill m3). The first documentation of Ash Dieback (ADB) is from 2008 from a nursery in the southeastern part of the country. A survey later that year showed that dieback symptoms were present over a distance of nearly 400 km in the southeastern region. In addition to nurseries and forests, ADB symptoms were observed on roadside, alley, garden and park trees. Based on the presence of old ADB-like stem lesions detected in 2008, the pathogen must have arrived to Norway no later than 2006. In 2008, the Norwegian Food Safety Authority laid down regulations with the aim of preventing further spread of ADB. These regulations divide the country into quarantine, observation and infection-free zones, and prohibit the export of ash seedlings, seed and wood from the quarantine zone. Despite of these regulations, the disease spread rapidly along the western coast in the period between 2009 and 2013, and currently only the ash stands in Central Norway are free of the disease. The rapid spread of the disease in Norway is obviously due to airborne dispersal of pathogen ascospores. In our experimental stand in SE Norway the number of pathogen fruit bodies can be as high as 10,000 per m2 in the peak season, mid-July to mid-August. During the early morning hours the amount of pathogen ascospores at a diseased stand can exceed 100,000 ascospores per m3 air. The first symptoms of the disease, necrotic lesions on leaf blade and petiole, appear typically during the first two weeks of August in SE Norway. To observe long-term impacts of ADB, eight monitoring plots have been established in continental and North Atlantic climate zones. In SE Norway with the oldest disease history, above 60 % of the trees with a breast height diameter (BHD) below 12.5 cm have so far died or suffer from severe defoliation, 1/3 of the larger trees being affected to a similar degree. The proportions of healthy (no signs of defoliation) small and larger trees are 20% and 37%, respectively. In SW Norway with more recent disease history a similar trend is observed but the proportion of dead trees is still small. As a consequence of ADB, the Norwegian nurseries no longer grow ash seedlings. There are currently no practical control options for the disease in forestland. Several European countries have reported that even at heavily diseased ash stands there are often some ash trees that show little symptoms. This may be due to genetic variation between trees in disease resistance, a hypothesis that is currently being investigated in several European projects. Thus implementation of forest management practices that eliminate ash could have a negative effect as survival of the tree ultimately depends on selection of trees with increased disease resistance. Bibliography for Ari M. Hietala Ari M. Hietala is a Senior Forest Pathologist at the Norwegian Forest and Landscape Institute, which is a primarily government funded organisation providing scientific research and services to government, non-governmental and commercial organisations. He has worked with a range of fungal root and shoot diseases occurring on broadleaved trees and conifers indigenous to the Nordic countries. Ari and the rest of the group participate currently in several European consortia engaged in ash dieback research.