Forest health highlighted at National Geographic

The pinewood nematode is infamous for infecting trees and causing pine wilt disease. This nematode is one of the most serious threats to forests worldwide, affecting especially conifers. The Forest Health team of Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária (INIAV), coordinated by GREEN-IT Bioresources for Sustainability member Edmundo Sousa, has been involved, since day one, in the study of the dynamics of this disease and in the development of strategies to control dispersion and incidence. Their work is now highlighted in the February 2023 issue of National Geographic.

Originally from North America, the pinewood nematode was first detected in Portugal in 1999, pushed by trade globalization, and greatly impacted forests of maritime pine. Invisible to the naked eye, the pinewood nematode needs to catch a ride with flying insects to hop on from a dying infected tree to a healthy tree. In Portugal, the accomplice is the long-horned beetle (Monochamus galloprovincialis). “The nematode and the longicorn do not establish a true symbiosis, although the first depends on the second, and the insect benefits from the existence of more dead trees to colonize” explains Edmundo Sousa to National Geographic.

Find out more about this serious forest health problem and the work of our researchers in the latest issue of National Geographic.