MEMO TO REPORTERSMatteo Garbelotto, adjunct professor and forest pathologist at the University of California, Berkeley, today issued the following statement to clarify research conducted at the Garbelotto Laboratory that formed the basis for a news story that appeared March 1. The story indicated that the Sudden Oak Death pathogen had been discovered in the Sierra Nevada.
* Based upon the data from my research, I cannot say that the microbe responsible for Sudden Oak Death exists in the Sierra Nevada.
* The initial results of a single sample taken from the Sierra Nevada region remain inconclusive and do not prove the presence of the pathogen in the region.
* Reliable preliminary results are only obtained after a complete series of tests are performed. Those tests have not yet been performed for the samples from the Sierra Nevada region.
The Garbelotto Laboratory at UC Berkeley is using DNA technology to survey for the presence of the Sudden Oak Death pathogen throughout the state of California. Matteo Garbelotto is a cooperative extension specialist at the Department of Environmental Science, Policy & Management at UC Berkeley's College of Natural Resources.
