Economic, environmental, and societal impacts of the Boxwood Blight Insight Group research

Abstract

Boxwood blight threatens the United States’ leading evergreen ornamental shrub and the broader green-industry economy it anchors. This study synthesizes four years of research outputs from the Boxwood Blight Insight Group (BBIG)—a transdisciplinary, systems-based consortium—to quantify the economic, environmental, and societal returns generated by research-driven diagnostics, risk tools, resistant cultivars, microbiome-based interventions, and best management practices. Using a structured benefit inventory that avoids double counting, empirically grounded adoption curves, and standard public‐sector discounting (3%), along with monetization of externalities (e.g., social cost of carbon), the analysis translates 100+ documented journal articles and impact statements into defensible monetary values. Direct producer benefits—higher net margins, avoided crop losses, and lower input costs—approach a net present value (NPV) of $1.2 billion over 10 years, with the largest contributions from cultivar resistance, precision sanitation, and weather-based spray optimization. Adding monetized environmental and regulatory savings increases NPV by $180 million; when consumer and societal spillovers are included, aggregate benefits rise to $1.6–$2.1 billion. Even under conservative uptake (30%) and excluding “soft” benefits, the program yields a 21:1 benefit–cost ratio relative to cumulative research investment. These findings demonstrate that embedding economic analyses within plant health R&D can accelerate adoption, guide policy and cost-share design, and safeguard an iconic landscape plant whose wholesale value exceeds $140.9 million annually and supports a much larger downstream market. BBIG provides a repeatable template for integrating disease biology with economic evaluation to capture the full public return to specialty-crop research.