Proceedings of the Sixty-first Annual Meeting of the Northeastern ...

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are doing. We need to continue to educate Bowers about the significance of applied
weed science research. Don Shilling said we should draft a letter to Bowers and get the
commodity groups on Board. Carol said that Bowers will attend the WSSA Meeting in
New York and that we need to make sure he attends a number of sessions and possibly
meets with the Board of Directors. Lee said he will continue to meet with Bowers to
discuss weed science research priorities. In terms of the poor submission rate from
weed biology, Lars said we need to encourage more NRI applications. Lee will send out
a notice of the NRI program via email during the first week of November. The letter of
intent for NRI grants is due in early December.
CSREES Workshop on Plant and Pest Biology Priorities- Lee stated that WSSA will
have the opportunity to address CSREES about its future research priorities in the area
of plant and pest biology on Nov. 16 in Alexandria, VA. Carol has since talked to David
Shaw, who agreed to make the presentation at the workshop. Lee will work with the
WSSA Research committee over the next 10 days to draft a 1 page written summary of
our priorities that is due by Nov. 9. (Please see the Dec. Newsletter story below for
more information). The following link will take you to NRI Competitive Grants Program
Request for Applications (RFA): http://www.csrees.usda.gov/funding/rfas/nri_rfa.html
5. Find opportunities to advance the awareness and financial support of weed science in the
2007 Farm Bill.
a. Lee said the National Association of Wheat Growers (NAWG) is initiating a Weed
Resistance management project through the NAWG Foundation that will produce a
web-based curriculum on the topic. Primary target audiences include wheat growers
and educators. NAWG needs to recruit a respected weed scientist in each of several
geographic/climatic regions to serve as a reviewer. The reviewers would be provided
an honorarium to compensate them for their time. NAWG will also be looking for a
weed science graduate student affiliated with on of the universities to serve as a
technical coordinator. Lee talked with Darren Coppock, NAWG Executive Director,
to get more details and proceeded to work with Nathan Danielson from BioCognito,
the company being used by NAWG to organize the work, to request applications
from interested weed scientists. On Dec. 7, 2005, Biocognito chose Dr. Lynn
Fandrich from Oregon State to head the project. A similar weed resistance project is
likely to be conducted for cotton in the near future.
b. Lee attended a Co-FARM meeting where Rob Hedberg was the guest speaker. Rob
said that administration/OMB wants to increase competitive funding across the entire
Federal portfolio as that is perceived to result in the highest quality research. Rich
said this has been talked about for years and that we need to stress the balance
needed between competitive funding that needs to be longer term with formula
funding that is perceived to leverage/match significant state dollars.
6. Build a coalition to promote funding for invasive weed management through hunting and
fishing groups.
a. Meetings with Russ Mason- Intn’l Assoc. of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (IAFWA) and
Ron Helinski- Wildlife Management Institute- Lee stated that there is a lot of potential
to sequester invasive weed research dollars by building a coalition with wildlife
groups. The wildlife groups have a lot of resources to help us. It’s an easy selling
point as ~ 75% of Congress is a member of the sportsmen’s caucus. We just need
to convince them of the fish and game habitat losses caused by invasive weeds.
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