Speaker 1: Ryan Contreras, Ph.D., Professor, Oregon State University
Title: Past Successes and Future Directions for Nursery Breeding at Oregon State

Description: Since 2009, the Ornamental Plant Breeding Program has been working to support the nursery industry through the development of new cultivars. To date, we have released seven trees and shrubs exhibiting a variety of improvements. The program continues to evolve and push into new directions of evaluation and techniques. We will summarize where we have come and explore future directions including breeding for climate change and genomic tools that can help improve breeding efficiency.

Speaker 2: Neil Bell, Community Horticulturist, OSU Extension Service
Title: Long-Term Landscape Evaluation of Drought-Tolerant Groundcovers

Description: Northwest Plant Evaluations is an OSU Extension program geared to in-ground multi-year evaluations of shrubs, primarily for un-irrigated landscapes in the Pacific Northwest. Since 2000, evaluations have included species and cultivars of Hebe, Cistus, Halimium, Ceanothus, Grevillea and Arctostaphylos. Since 2019, the program has been evaluating an array of broadleaved evergreen groundcovers of various sizes for use in un-irrigated landscape situations for growth, flowering, landscape appearance and hardiness. The presentation will discuss plants of various sizes for low-input landscapes in the region.

Speaker 3: Marcelo L. Moretti, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Oregon State University Deptartment of Horticulture
Title: Watts Up: Developing Pulse Electric Field as an Alternative to Methyl Bromide

Description: This session will describe how a group of researchers at OSU, USDA ARS, and LISI Global are exploring pulse electric field to manage weed seeds, soil-borne disease, and parasitic nematodes in ornamental seedling beds.