Walnut Witches'-Broom Disease Threatens Butternut Restoration Efforts in Indiana.

Due to the devastating effects of butternut canker disease, efforts to protect the endangered butternut () tree through resistance breeding have been a primary focus of forest restoration efforts. Walnut witches'-broom (WWB) disease poses a serious threat to these restoration efforts. This study sought to confirm the presence of the WWB disease phytoplasma, ' Phytoplasma pruni', in butternut research plantings in Indiana using molecular methods and Sanger sequencing and to identify butternut families affected by the disease.

Phytobiome Metabarcoding: A Tool to Help Identify Prokaryotic and Eukaryotic Causal Agents of Undiagnosed Tree Diseases.

Recent advancements in high-throughput sequencing have provided scientists with vastly enhanced tools to diagnose unknown tree diseases. One of these techniques is referred to as metabarcoding, which uses phylogenetically informative reference genes to taxonomically classify short DNA sequences amplified from environmental samples. Using metabarcoding, we are able to compare the microbiota of symptomatic and asymptomatic (including presumably naïve) samples and identify microbe(s) that are only present in symptomatic samples and could therefore be responsible for the undiagnosed disease.