 Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Camila Ables. I am a senior program officer at the National Academies Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources. So I'd like to welcome all of you to the first public meeting of the study committee that will be conducting a review of current knowledge on grapevine viruses, grapevine red watch virus, and grapevine lethal associated virus type 3 research outcomes, gaps, and future research approach. So this study is being done at the request of the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Now I turn it over to the committee chair, Dr. Anna Whitfield. Thank you. Welcome to this first public meeting of our committee. We're here today to further discuss the focus and the boundaries of this task that's so important for California grapevine. And so today we're going to be going over some questions that have been generated after reading the task and introducing the public to the members of our team. So can we go to slide two? So we're going to be doing our introduction. And then we have submitted some questions to our panel. And with that, I'll go ahead and hand it over to my vice chair to introduce himself. And then we'll go over the other panel members that are present in this meeting. Slide three, thank you. I was muted. Thank you. Thank you, Anna. My name is Alex Kerser. I'm a professor of plant virology at the University of Idaho. I was involved in various studies of plant viruses for the past 30-plus years. And was also involved a little bit in studies of grapevine viruses since about 2008. I have a split research and teaching appointment here at the University of Idaho and teach a graduate course on plant virology. And that's probably me as our next panelist. Yeah, Honoufemiah Labis, my name. I'm an associate professor and extension specialist with the Texas A&M University System. I'm in the southern station of the Texas A&M University System. But I did my PhD at Washington State on the direction of Dr. Naidu Rayapati. I worked on grapevine viruses, looking at genetic diversity and population structure of viruses in grapes, and also looking at impact of B4-3 on grape performance. But since I've been in Texas, I've changed things a little bit. I still work on viruses. But most of my work is on other fruit crops, like citrus as well as vegetable crops. But the focus on virology is still the same. And recently I started doing some more work on grape viruses and working with colleagues in the other parts of the state where grapes are grown, basically trying to figure out what are the viruses present in the state and what are the major threats. And now can we mitigate those threats? Thank you. Thank you, Bemi. Oscar? Hello. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Oscar Butumen, citrus pathologist with University of Florida. I have research and extension apartment, no teaching apartment. In the past, I always worked with viruses and almost only viruses, including postdoctoral and project scientist period at UC Davis, working on processing tomato viruses and other vegetable viruses. Currently, I'm working almost only on citrus, a Hong Kong bean disease, citrus screening. And I have a very little site project on tomato infecting viruses. That's all I have. Thank you, Oscar. Our next committee member, Libby Situants, isn't able to join us today. But she's an assistant professor at Clemson University, and she has expertise working with grapevine red blotch and its hemipteran vectors. So she has some great expertise that's relevant to the work of this team. Mamadou? Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Yes, I don't know. Somehow my camera is not working anymore. Hi, my name is Mamadou Fal from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. I'm a research scientist in AFC and a security professor at the University of Sherbrooke. My work mainly on grapevine viruses from virus detection to modeling. And recently, I started working on soil virum and how that can impact grapevine health. Thank you. Alana? My name is Alana Jacobson. I'm an associate professor of entomology at Auburn University. And I've been working on insect-transmitted viruses for probably the last 15 years. I don't have experience working on any of the grapeviruses, but I've got experience working on DRIPS transmission of Toscoviruses, aphid transmission of Polaroviruses, and white fly transmission of Bacomaviruses. So just kind of well-rounded. And the majority of my focus works on vector transmission. Great. Thank you, Alana. Our next committee member, Kirsten Paul Silinski, is at the University of Florida. She's a professor of entomology, and she works on hemipdrine transmission of HLB, a very important disease of cysts. So that expertise definitely comes into play when we're talking about perineal crops that support these vector-borne plant diseases. And then our next committee member, I don't think Wenping is able to make it either. And he studies grapevine viruses at Missouri State University. So he has a long history with that. And our next member is here to introduce themselves as Naidu. Thanks, Anna. Good afternoon. This is Naidu Raya Party from Washington State University. I'm currently a professor in plant pathology. I am also serving as director at Irrigated Agriculture Research and Action Center in Proser, Washington State. Since 2004, I have been working on grapeviruses in Washington State, building a new program addressing different aspects of viral problems affecting the wine grapes in Washington State. Some of my research focus has been from identification of viruses to management epidemiology as well as molecular biology of viruses, especially leaf roll-associated virus-3. I have 30-plus years of experience working with plant viruses, not only at Washington State, but across many different countries, working on several different insect vectors as well as virus types, infecting a broad range of crops in subsistence agriculture. That's all I have. Thank you, Naidu. Stuart. Hey, good afternoon, everyone. So I'm Stuart Wrights. I am a professor at Oregon State University and the director of the Malfur experiment station in eastern Oregon. And I have been working on the ecology and management of insect vectors of plant pathogens, in particular with thrips and TOSCO viruses. But we've also worked on whiteflies, psyllids, leafhoppers, a variety of different vectors, pathogens, and cropping systems. And I think that's about it. Thank you. Thank you, Stuart. Tom? Hi there. This is Tom Turpin. I am a trained in plant pathology and worked half my career as a virologist in biotechnology. And the other half of my career, I've worked more of a supporting role in both public and private contexts in just a wide variety of situations, including the Florida citrus industry. And right now, I'm working closely with UC Davis on a small startup company. We're commercializing a chemical sensor, a little sniffer widget that has applications in agriculture for disease detection and post-arvest quality amongst other applications. Thank you, Tom. So very privileged to work with such a great team of scientists with expertise that really addresses the task that we have in front of us. And I have worked with vector-borne diseases, plants, working with mites, thrips, aphids, plant hoppers, a variety of different insect vectors. So we're really excited to delve into this task. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Camilla. Cam, can you show the next slide? OK, so Matt and Chris and Steve, please introduce yourselves. Tell us more about yourselves. Sure, I'll go ahead. My name is Matt Kaiser. I'm an environmental program manager with the California Department of Food and Agriculture here. I work with the Pierce's Disease Control Program. And I'll share more about that in a minute. But also work with the Pierce's Disease and Glassic and Shropshire to board that is funding and originally sought out this review project. So thank you all for the opportunity today and for the chance to meet you all in your time. So thank you. Chris. Hi there, everyone. I'm Chris Lowe. I have been the research coordinator for the Pierce's Disease Glassic and Shropshire to board for about two years now. Otherwise, I'm an independent consultant in vineyards here based out of Napa. My company is called Vine Balance Consulting. In terms of my academic background, I have studied plants. I studied plant science at Cornell University before going to UC Davis for a genetics degree. I worked with Dr. Andy Walker in root stock breeding. And even though I ended up transitioning to the industry, I am passionate about science and so have been involved in the research community throughout my career. And I am very excited about this study and about having this committee take a look at all of our industry issues with grapevine viruses. So I thank you very much for all of your time. Steve. Steve here. I didn't see Steve on the current list of attendees. I can just mention Steve has been one of the, I believe one of the original members of the PDGWIS Board when it was first formed in 2001. He's also the chair of the board's research screening committee, which includes board members and other scientists and industry representatives and other folks that represent one step of the proposal review process associated with the annual RFP. So he's been kind of our most directly interested in a research board member since the beginning. So hopefully he can join on shortly. Thank you. And thanks to Matt and Chris for being here. Okay, so before I give the floor to Matt, I am first gonna give a brief overview of the National Academies and our study process. And this is just for anyone who's joining us today who may not be familiar with the institution. Can you go to the next slide, Sam? Okay, so the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine consists of three honorific academies. So the NAS, the N-A-E and the N-A-M, which used to be the IOM or the Institute of Medicine, as well as the work of scientists across the country inside and outside of these academies who provide expert advice to the nation on issues involving science, engineering and medicine. And our mission is to provide independent trustworthy advice and facilitate solutions to complex challenges by mobilizing expertise, practice and knowledge in science, engineering and medicine. And we fulfill this mission through many convenient activities including consensus studies like the one we are discussing today. Next slide, please. So as opposed to other convenient activities that we organize such as workshops or forums, consensus studies are conducted by a committee convened specifically for a unique task. The experts who serve on these committees do so as individuals. They are not representing any organization or institution that they belong to and they serve as volunteers. Consensus study committees review the state of scientific literature to write a report that responds to the problem identified in the statement of task. So here I have photos of three reports that came out of consensus studies. Pierce's disease was released in 2004 and this report or that study was done after request of CDFA, but that was before my time. So during my time, we released two reports on Swedish Green or Huang Longbing and one was in 2010, the one in the middle and then the one on the right, we released in 2018. Next slide, please. So I just want to quickly go over our study process and each consensus study goes through a number of stages or phases. And the first one is on the left, which is we define the study and we develop the statement of task or we call it SOD through conversations between us, the national academies and the study sponsor. And then next is the committee selection and approval stage. The national academies asks for nominations to identify individuals with the necessary expertise to address the task. Each committee should be composed of individuals with the appropriate range of expertise and experience relevant to the task and contain a balance of perspectives on the task questions. The nominees are appointed to a committee by the president of the National Academy of Sciences Dr. Marcia McNutt. Committee membership is provisional until the committee has completed a discussion about conflict of interest, disclosures, and composition. After being appointed, the committee moves into its information gathering phase. So this is the third box there. The committee invites speakers to present in person or via Zoom and members of the public may also submit information for the committee to consider. And I will tell you how that's done. As it gathers information, the committee will also begin deliberating about how to best address their task and then later they will begin drafting a report. So when the draft report is complete, the document will be reviewed and the committee must revise the report as needed in response to the reviewer comments. The national academies report review committee determines if the reviewer comments have been appropriately addressed and approves the report for release. The final report is then delivered to the sponsor and made publicly available. So it's actually a long process. The review is rigorous. And I just want to make a few notes here. So when we do the report dissemination, we provide a copy of the report at NAP.edu. This is the National Academies Press website. And we also do a public webinar. And also a comment about meetings. So meetings are called open sessions when the committee hears from invited speakers and the public can attend or listen in. So the one we have today, this is a public meeting. It's an open session because we have people who are not on the committee. But committee also can meet in closed session to discuss its task and how to best address it. And during this closed session, only the committee and the staff are present. And then any time between the beginning of the project or the study and the end, the public has the opportunity to provide feedback or comment via our study or via our study or project website. Okay, so next slide please. So as I mentioned, we are given a task and it is written in this thing we call statement of task or SOT. So for this particular committee, CDFA requested that we convene an ad hoc committee to provide guidance on grapevine disease research to the CDFA PDGWIS Board. And actually we were requested to carry out three interrelated activities. So the first one is the review of proposals that were submitted to the PDGWIS Board. Activity two is to take up their RFP. And activity three is the focus of our meeting today. Review of current knowledge on grapevine viruses, GRBVN, GL, GLRFB3 research outcomes gaps in future research approach. Okay, so next slide please. This is the rest of the statement of task and it was pretty long. And in the interest of time, I will just say that if you go to the project website, the full statement of task is there. Okay, and speaking of which, can you go to the next slide? This is how the project or the study website looks like. So over here, you will find information about the committee members. We have their bios there, we have the statement of task. And also we have announcements of upcoming events like meetings or if we're gonna have webinars, it will be announced. So if you want to follow our study, you can subscribe or if you wanna send a comment, you can click on this teeny tiny thing underneath the nice photo, it's circled there. You can click on that one and then it will let you send us your comment or feedback. Or you can send us an email, my email is there, I am Camila and our senior program assistant is Sam. Okay, and next slide. I just want to briefly go over our timeline. So this study started early this year and it will end December of next year. And so far, these boxes on the left, we have done those already. So for the activity one, we released the report on May, May 4. And then activity two, which is the RFP critique, we are planning to do a public release early July. So here on the right where we have the purple boxes, this is what we're going to start to work on. And this is the first meeting under this activity three. And with that, Matt, it's your turn. Thank you very much, Camila. Here we go. Okay, there should show up on the screen for you now. And yes, I just want to give or was asked to give just a little bit of background about the pedigress board and kind of the existing process that's used for research and kind of how we got to this point. So the, I think toggle the slides a different way here. All right, there we go. So the Pierce the Disease Control Program, again, I have to give some context before we can get into viruses just to sort of see how this fits together. The program was really started in response to threat to wine grapes in California in 1999, basically, with pictures on the right, which is what a Temecula looked like after a kind of explosive outbreak of glassy wing sharpshooter, which was introduced to California from the southeastern US. Prior to then, Pierce's disease was endemic to California, but largely manageable or would pop up in sort of a kind of known areas. And this new vector just presented a totally game-changing situation for the landscape just because it could fly much further and had a much wider host range and seemed to be happy pretty much anywhere and spreading the disease. So the program was initiated so that kind of part of our program is a lot of there's regulatory aspects to the movement of nursery stock, bulk citrus. There's treatments and inspections in areas where GWIS doesn't exist. There's biocontrol releases in places where it does. And overall, it's been a very cooperative program between the industry in California, the wine grape industry particularly, and also the government, both federal government. Within California, we also have the county agricultural commissioners, which is a unique system of kind of our boots on the ground that are doing a lot of the actual trapping and nursery stock enforcement. So part of the industry oversight of that program is this Pierce's Disease and Classifying Sharpshooter Board. It was formed in 2001 and includes 14 members that represent the major wine grape growing regions of the state as well as one public member who's historically been a representative of the nursery industry, just because they're very much affected by some of the regulatory stuff associated with the movement of nursery stock for the program. The board also holds joint meetings with another state body called the Pierce's Disease Advisory Task Force. That's another group that includes a few county agricultural commissioners from Southern California, the San Joaquin Valley, and NAPPA representatives from the citrus and table grape industries, as well as scientists and some other experts. That advisory task force doesn't have a budget themselves, but their kind of critical expertise contributes to the discussion and overall oversight of the program and to their joint meetings. The board budget is based on and what the board has oversight over is they make recommendations to the secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture on the use of funds that are collected through an industry assessment. So this assessment that is paying for all the board's activities and this project comes from crushed grapes each year at harvest. The rate is set by the board. Again, this year it will be set at or was recommended to be set at $1.25 per $1,000 of value for the 2023 harvest. So every $1,000 worth of crushed grapes that are crushed into juice for use in juice or wine, $1.25 of that is collected for this program. So over the life of the program, California growers have paid in over $83 million over 21 years. And this largely funds research and some other activities related to Pierce's disease response and control, but a large chunk of that is research. So how we get from Pierce's disease to talking about viruses starting in 2010 when European grapevine moth was introduced as it became or was introduced to California in Northern California and was a serious threat to the industry, the board having already being in place and having good networking within industry. The statute that defines the board's scope was expanded to allow for a specific process by which other pest or diseases could be designated for use of assessment funds for research and outreach activities. So that started in 2010 with EGBM. And then really around 2014 and 2015 was when the three viruses that the board can fund research and outreach on, red blotch, leaf roll and fan leaf, as well as mealybugs that's listed twice because it started out as fine mealybug in 2014. And then in 2015 was expanded to include all mealybug pests of wine grapes, both as vectors of viral diseases and as pests in their own right. And then finally most recently spotted lanternfly was added for the first time a pest before it had actually reached California was added to the list and that allowed for the use of assessment funds for some outreach activities to try to spread the word and help with early detection efforts. There we go. So the getting into the research, research projects are selected through an annual request for proposals that's open every year from December through January. Applicants must be from nonprofit institutions. So that's written into the statute about what the board can use with assessment funds. So such as universities or other groups that can partner with somebody who can do research as part of a nonprofit institution. Proposals are reviewed by scientific review panels that are made up of external volunteer subject matter experts. And then goes to, as I mentioned before during the introductions, research screening committee. So the scientific reviewers will score the proposals by the categories in the RFP and provide written comments. The research screening committee will then review those scores and comments and the proposals themselves and ultimately then make a recommendation to the full PDGWIS board who will then make a recommendation to the secretary usually in April. So the RFP is open from December to January. Decisions made sometime around April for new projects that start generally in July. I will mention maybe different from some other research programs. There isn't a set quota or funding allocation in advance of each funding cycle. So the board has some discretion and ability to kind of respond to what quality and quantity of proposals are received in a given year. So if there's a particularly year that has a large number of exceptionally strong proposals, they may elect to fund more projects that year than they had in years prior and then just adjust accordingly. Again, with the ability to also change the assessment rate year to year based on fiscal needs of the board and of their research and outreach program. I'll mention also the applicants do receive all the written scientific reviewer comments after the decisions are made. So they get fairly detailed and we try to aim for having the reviewers give them as constructive as comments as possible so that they can, both for folks that are funded and not funded, but especially those that are not if there's improvements that they can make and reapply the next year, then they're more than welcome to do so. I'll mention also here, so much of this process, as well as the priorities of the research screening committee are really based on that National Academy of Sciences review that Camilla mentioned from that was finished and published in 2004 for Pierce's disease and GWIS. Now these other paths have been tagged onto this over time, but the general structure of the process and the program is largely reflected of some of that early guidance. And I'll speak to also just a couple of examples of research successes that we had out of the kind of longterm vision that we got out of the National Academy's review the first time around was, for example, now just a couple of years ago or as of a couple of years ago, we have five conventionally bred Pierce's disease resistant grapes on the market that were the product of a very long running resistance breeding program, conventional breeding program to get those grapes out. And now they're out and wine is being made from them and they're being used in areas that historically were very problematic for Pierce's disease such as riparian areas or other spots that are just hard to grow grapes otherwise because of the disease pressure. Other kind of longterm things that have come out of that there's been a long running research program using transgenics as well as other gene editing tools and exploring those for Pierce's disease and other diseases in the RFP with the realization that the regulatory hurdles that those may go through before they would be accepted or released, if ever might be high, but the board's always taken the approach of investing in the best science and keeping the best options open with an eye towards the future and kind of keeping one eye to the long road. I was asked also just to kind of briefly cover some history of funding from the research from the board. So just this past year and from the 2023 cycle that's basically projects that will be starting next month, 17 proposals were ultimately funded out of 31 that were received, that totaled about $2.7 million total. The projects were for one to three years. There's another 10 projects that were multi-year projects that have been funded in years prior that were continuing this year as well. And again, over the life of the board, since 2001, there's been 55 million invested in research. Again, that is a little bit short of the total amount that's been collected from wine grape growers again, because some of this is used for outreach activities as well as some Pierce's disease control activities that aren't reflected in this research, but this is the majority of the 83 million that I mentioned before. Since 2001, there have been 282 grants funded by the board with about 42 and a half million for Pierce's disease and its vectors. And since 2010, about 12 and a half million for other pests and diseases. Just looking at the viruses and mealybugs, which should kind of lump together just because of the connection some of them have as vectors. The research allocation over time since 2015, when the virus research really started, has been about one third for virus and mealybug funding and over that period, although in recent years, it's actually been closer to half or a little bit more than half for viruses and mealybugs. Averaging about 3.1 million per year since 2015 and about 1.3 million of that for viruses or mealybugs. And then also just kind of splitting it out by topic. The board on average receives 23 proposals a year, although this year we had an uptick, which was quite nice. So averaging 23 proposals and 14 of those funded per year, just about half of those are for these other pests and diseases, again, the majority of which are related to viruses, except for a couple early on projects related to PGVM and from our rate of stink bug. And right, just as a disclaimer from the breakdown here, of course there's projects that deal with multiple pests from time to time. So of the numbers here, there are some marked as leaf roll that may also touch on mealybugs as a factor, particularly for leaf roll. And I'll just touch briefly on public outreach because that kind of plays into science communication and other activities that the board is involved in. The board contracts with an outreach firm that releases quarterly newsletters that are sent out to over 7,000 growers who are the folks that are actually paying the assessment, as well as other stakeholders. Plus they send out a monthly e-newsletter to an additional 1,200 farmers, industry groups, elected officials and others. Their research updates are regularly or are featured in every newsletter and many of these materials that come out. They also have a presence at a lot of trade shows or other industry meetings, a Facebook page with updates and a YouTube channel that includes some scientists talking about their work. It's really been a goal to make the, or to help the industry and the sort of regular grape growers that are paying into this and seeing it come out of what they get from their processor who buys their grapes to try to understand and see where that money is going as transparently and as excessively as possible. So we're always looking for ways to make that work more approachable and accessible. And that's about all I had. So I'll just again, thank you all for your time and work on this project. Anybody with questions about our program in general or the board itself? Welcome to, we have our general email there as well as our mainline phone number and lots of this information and more is on our website as well. So thank you all. Sam, can you share the last slide which has the questions that Matt and Chris will be addressing? We can get started, Matt, if you're ready to go. It's the last one, the last one as well. Last one. Yes, you're just in my screen. Yes, yeah, looks good. Thank you. And I think between the two of us, I've done a lot of talking. Chris, I can let you take the first question. We can kind of bounce back and forth as needed. That sounds great. Yeah, I can go ahead and get started with question number one. So why did we commission this study and why did we choose the National Academies? Well, as Matt mentioned, we've made some pretty good progress as an industry with Pierce's disease. Our original focus, our original problem, why the board was formed. Compared to where we were when we started, we now have an effective Pierce's disease control program. We have Pierce's disease resistant varieties. We have really detailed knowledge on the epidemiology of the disease. We know about PD-resistant gene sources and we might actually soon have several biocontrol curative products out there. So a lot of strides have been made since the original study. And I think there are less unknowns about that system with all the research, great research that continues to be done. But with viruses, while we also know a lot about some aspects of different epidemiologies of leaf roll and red blotch, as an industry, we are really still struggling with effective control strategies. So for leaf roll virus, for example, I mean, we know a single crawler can spread the virus within an hour. We know that, but that's just too fast for any sort of knockdown vector control strategy. So even when vector populations are very low, we see spread. We don't have any resistance within Vitis that we have taken advantage of, at least for host plant resistance. A red blotch, we have one known vector, but and a pretty inefficient one. And we have knowledge gaps about where it over winters, how to effectively control it even do we still, do we need to? And so for both viruses, growers are really told to identify infected vines and remove them, which is not really sustainable. And in many growers' opinions, it's not working. So we really need a broad view of what information we have as an industry and what we're missing to develop some novel controls. As for why choosing the national academies, we embarked on a wonderfully successful project with you in the past. I read that report when I started this position as a research coordinator, as well as the more recent study done with the Florida Citrus Board on HLB, and there were some great parallels. And I just thought that this would be a great way for us to get that broad view from a wide range of experts in your fields. Anything I missed, Matt? Why are we doing this? I think that pretty well covers it. I think also just the respect and notoriety around the national academies and it can help attract attention also to this issue from folks that maybe aren't currently involved or maybe involved in virology, but not grapevine virology or other just attract more people to this issue and realizing that these are real challenges that would be essential to get some research progress on and just try to attract attention to the issue. Are there any follow-up questions for that one? No, okay, great. Yeah, just stop me anytime. So question two, how will we use the results from this study? Well, I know we're focusing today on task three, but you also have recently reviewed our RFP and our proposals and I mean, changes to our RFP process could certainly be done and useful for us to cast a wider net when it comes to funding research or the field of grape virology is full of fantastic scientists, but it is small and we see proposals from a relatively few numbers of them. So there may be more opportunities out there for collaboration and even maybe cross commodity groups. And so we just really like to explore how that might be possible within our current RFP and the funding process. For task three, which we're focused on today, it will be very helpful to concretely identify our knowledge gaps so we can think about how to tackle them from a scientific research perspective, be it like soliciting specific proposals from specific scientists, funding some sort of large collaborative project with specific objectives once those are defined. Should we be prioritizing some types of studies over others within our proposal selection process? Those are the sort of things that came to mind when I was thinking about this question. Anything you have to add, Matt? I think you covered it well, Chris. It's really just this hope to improve our process and help the industry understand and help us as a program tailor both our RFP and selection process and outreach that we're doing to try to ensure that we're getting the best research and the best use of grower dollars to fund that research. Any follow-up questions on that? Okay, great. So types of recommendation that would be the most least helpful. So for the most helpful, not only our knowledge gaps, but what types of research would help fill them? What are we missing? And how to perhaps bridge the gap between research and application? That is something the board's been very interested in. Sometimes we have some great research ideas and then they yield something that might not end up in an application. I know not all research goes that way, but how to help bridge that gap would be of interest. Outreach is a requirement for all of our research projects we fund, but is that enough or is more needed? Which research areas are most likely to lead to finding practical solutions to slowing virus spread in grower fields? I think that's this big one that we would really love some insight on and really removing viruses from our kind of plant material pipeline. What interference opportunities are we missing? Are there new technologies used in other crops that we are not using that make potentially have promise? One thing I thought of is, in looking at our funded work, are there resources that our research community lack to effectively study viruses at the detail needed? Potentially, how could these be overcome? One thing I very much liked about the original study in 2004 was the identification of areas of study that might lead to advances in control in the short-term versus long-term. I would like to start thinking about our research portfolio that way to make sure we have kind of a balanced approach. And we're not just, you know, we do fund basic science and sometimes that's where it needs to start but a wide range of studies. And for the least helpful, I'm not really sure. I suppose we're not just looking for a reiteration of what we know we don't know. Like are there more vectors for a red blotch? We have researchers trying to answer those questions. Where do the three-cornered alfalfa hopper trees or the tree hopper is over winter? We have research, you know, so just something a bit more detailed. Matt, anything else you could think of for helpful recommendations or at least helpful? No, but just echoing that, the structure and the format of the review that was done, you know, going on 20 years ago, but that really was well laid out and I think helpful for the program and especially that kind of helping find a balance between okay, some real applied solutions that might work in the short term to kind of shore up the management, you know, which as Chris said is largely just testing and pulling vines, which is not sustainable with the disease spread rates that we're seeing in places. And then that also, so improvements there, yeah, great, but and then also the balancing that with the long-term stuff about sort of what, you know, is resistance something worth pursuing or is that something that's just so sort of unthinkable for viruses that we just need to think about other tactics? So just those kind of balancing the long-term and the short-term will be really helpful. Yeah, totally agree. Okay, so moving on to question four, this one was a little hard for me as well, but one thing that came up actually just recently at a board meeting that might be outside the statement of task is there are some groups that feel we have a need to understand potential challenges within our nursery industry regarding viruses and maintaining virus replant material all the way through. So for our nursery industry, our nurseries are not indoors or necessarily exclusively in greenhouses or screenhouses, as I understand, it's the case with other crops, they're outside, sometimes next to other vineyards, next to other agriculture fields. It's hard to grow the quantity of grapevines the industry needs in a small area. So that's a challenge that some people have recognized that might be contributing to some of our issues for viruses. But I think a complete review of our clean plant network is outside of this statement of task, although we would certainly be open to opinions about it and comments as to its relevance to our issues overall. That's really the only thing I could think of. Did you have anything else that came to mind, Matt? No, I didn't have anything. I did, well, no, I'll get to that at the end. So no, I didn't have anything else for that. Okay. And then the parts of the statement of task for activity three that are the most important and why? For me, novel ideas about future research approaches. So as a committee, you guys have expertise in numerous crop species, many different families of insect vectors, different viral pathogens, lots of crossover with grape, but some completely different systems as well. So what can the PDQS Board learn from that, learn from you and how can we translate it to evolve our request for proposals and funding process? I also think a comprehensive review of the literature for us for lethal type three and red blotch will be very valuable to have, especially perhaps an international perspective. There's no specific reason why we don't tend to fund, why we don't fund international researchers, but we haven't. Those could be some, there could be some interesting opportunities there if those recommendations were made. Those were the main two that came to mind for me. Anything to add, Matt? Just a discussion point that had come up along the while as we were first talking about this and putting it together. It's just, yeah, if there's ways or ideas that we can get people to talk to each other that aren't currently talking to each other and making connections between, as Chris said, you all being very well versed in virology, but also having connections to other fields and other collaborators, colleagues and just ways to sort of make connections and maybe spur some other ideas about ways of getting new ideas into this space. Yeah, okay. Okay, so the kind of information that we have or could provide that would help the committee? Well, obviously certainly lists of all the proposals we have funded, the HUN virus and the reports since we started, Matt outlined that just nine years now or since 2014 to 15, but that is certainly not a complete history, especially compared to work on leapfrog type three. And we certainly have lists and knowledge of industry and academic contacts that would be helpful to interview or talk to to gain different industry perspectives on our virus funding process and viral issues in the industry. I'm not sure what other types of information would be helpful, but anything that you guys can think of, we can pull it together, we absolutely will. Yeah, absolutely. Any questions about our processes on the back end with the RFP or as Chris said, the history of funding projects, progress reports on past reports that the board has funded and yeah, anything else? Yeah, we'd be happy to make any of that stuff available. I'll mention, I guess now I'll mention the PDGWIS board being basically state appointed body in California. All of their meetings are open meetings. All of the information that generally all of the projects and the reports that researchers produce do are either are or can be made publicly available. So that there's generally, everything is very open. Now that goes the other way as well. So anything that is going to be shared in almost any case with the PDGWIS board also needs to be made publicly available. So all of their handouts at their public meetings, it's open meetings, but in California that means very open. So all of the handouts, all of the everything goes to everybody who wants it. So that's part of a consideration if there's specific stuff about or questions or information that needs to go back and forth to the program directly, that stuff can go through Chris and I, we can handle that and talk about whatever, but things that will ultimately be shared with or if we're going to share anything with board members then it would end up being publicly available. So for example, the first report that was publicly available, that was shared with our board members as a handout, the public version as a handout at our last meeting earlier this week. Okay, and then for the last one, how did the CDFA use the recommendations in the prior report from 2004? I think Matt already covered this pretty well. It helped us to really focus research on some long-term projects that led to some sustainable solutions for Pierce's disease that we now have as an industry. Helped set a lot of the scientific rigor and guidelines behind our RFP and our funding process that we still use today. So that has all been very important. And also our assessment funds come up for a vote every five years, I believe. And we want the industry to know that we are very serious about the academic rigor behind this program. And I think involving the National Academy of Sciences really lends to that as well. Hey, I think that's it for me. Any questions or any other comments? Anything else I can help with? Anna? Well, first off, I'd like to thank you, Matt and Chris. This has been really informative for me. I have like several pages of notes from what you just provided. And I think it really like informs me and the rest of the committee about what, what are your initiatives and really what is our main, the main goal of the work. I think we only have like two or three minutes. I don't want to take up all that time, but does anyone else on the committee have additional questions that you wanted to ask? This Tom, I'll ask one while we have everyone. I am curious how the board arrives at the total assessment amount and how they decide what's the right amount of funds to assign to research, given the risk the industry takes and the value of the crop. Yeah, the assessment rate itself is set every year, this time of year, as I'd said, they had a meeting earlier this week. So at that point we'll look at for the upcoming state fiscal year, what their projected expenses and carryover are, and then set an assessment sort of accordingly, also taking into consideration what the board is made up of people that are paying the assessment. So they're interested in having that money be used for the best use possible. Generally, as I said, there isn't a set funding allocation going into HRFP cycle, but they'll oftentimes kind of take into consideration, okay, how much has been funded in the past for this, that or the other, but it really comes down to kind of what scores well, what kind of comments we get from the reviewers and what seems like the most promising or highest quality proposals received that year. Well, thanks Matt and Chris, I think we have a big challenge ahead of us, but I think we have a great team assembled, we're really up for the challenge of thinking about the best ways to develop those, come up with ideas for those short term and long-term solutions and facilitating collaboration between researchers, maybe even nontraditional people that you wouldn't think of that would study wine grapes. And we have that important goal of helping you make sure that California wine grapes have maintained their excellence and productivity in the future. So we're looking forward to working with you guys and developing a great report. Great, thank you so much. Yeah, thank you all very much. Thanks everyone, it's four o'clock, so we're gonna close this session. Have a good weekend and for the committee members, we're not gonna start the weekend yet, we're gonna move over to the closed session and discuss some takeaways. Thank you Matt and Chris. We will be in touch if we have other questions or we need the information that you could provide us, I will let you know when we need it and we will go from there. Thank you. Thank you everyone, great weekend. Bye. Thank you.