Farmers work to save firs

Fighting a plague of root rot, researchers find hope in Turkish and Japanese relatives of the Fraser

Christmas begins on the mountain slopes of North Carolina, where farmers grow Fraser firs from seedlings to decorate millions of East Coast homes, including the White House.

An estimated 50 million Fraser firs are under cultivation, and North Carolina ranks second in the nation behind Oregon in the number of Christmas trees harvested, state agriculture officials say.

With the rapid increase in fir plantings have come problems such as the spread of a highly destructive rot, called Phytophthora, that infects the roots of Frasers and kills thousands of trees each year. It costs North Carolina growers $5 million to $6 million a year.

The exotic pathogen doesn't just kill the trees; it also leaves the soil unusable for growing more Frasers. That poses a serious threat to a state industry that relies on the signature tree.

But help may be on the way from Turkey.

More than 50,000 Turkish firs are now growing on mountain slopes in North Carolina.

Growers and researchers are looking for disease-resistant varieties of fir that can thrive on land where Frasers can no longer grow, as well as species that can be grafted to improve the Frasers' disease resistance.

Jack Wiseman Jr., a wholesale Christmas tree grower in Avery County, said he has lost about 15 acres to the root rot, much of that since two hurricanes dumped nearly 50 inches of rain in the mountains in 2004. That nurtured the waterborne root rot that moves through the soil.

"We had marketable trees that died even before we were able to cut them that year," Wiseman said.

To make the land productive again, Wiseman has planted about 1,000 Turkish firs in recent years. He is hoping they will be ready to harvest in seven years, although they appear to grow more slowly than Frasers.

"They are a really pretty tree," Wiseman said. "It's really dark green and has a little bigger needle than the Fraser. ... If you have ground where you can't grow Frasers, you might as well try something."

Studying seedlings

Researchers at N.C. State University have identified the Turkish fir and the Momi fir from Japan as among the most promising alternatives of the more than 30 fir species they have studied for disease resistance.

At a research greenhouse at NCSU, AnneMargaret Braham, a research technician, used a hand-held field computer one day recently to enter data about the health of 6,000 fir seedlings sitting on a tabletop.

"We give them a code," Braham explained. "Zero is no symptoms. Five is you're dead."

The seedlings included Frasers as well as Turkish and Trojan firs grown from seeds collected in Turkey. They are part of greenhouse studies to assess which species are most disease-resistant. At the outset of the experiment, rice kernels with Phytophthora cultured on them by plant pathologist Mike Benson were put in the soil with each seedling to expose the seedlings to the fungus.

After more than three months, the Fraser seedlings stood about 8 inches tall. They were brown and shedding needles -- dead or nearly so. Most had already scored a 5 in Braham's tally.

"You can see why we're concerned about Phytophthora," said John Frampton, a Christmas tree geneticist at NCSU who has studied Frasers and other fir species for 12 years.

"It's really heartbreaking when you have a whole field of 6-foot-tall trees and then you get the disease."

In contrast to the Frasers, about two-thirds of the Turkish fir seedlings on the greenhouse table still held their dark green needles and appeared healthy at the end of the 16-week study. About half the Trojan firs were alive, and nearly all of the Momi firs from Japan were healthy.