Virginia Grape Disease Updates

We are having such a nice weather lately. I think most of you are in the field preparing for the up coming season. Our Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon are breeding bleeding now a days. (Typical mistake by a Japanese! I have to blame our education system to mix-up L and R when they taught me.    :p    3/30/10) VCE will be hosting several meetings in the central, northeastern, and eastern regions. Tony sent a notice a few days ago. If you have not received his email, you are probably not on his email list. Please contact him or me so that we can add you on the list. If you are new to the business and/or thinking about establishing a vineyard, please consider coming to our meeting on April 8th. It will be held at our AREC station. We will go over various aspects of viticulture and grape disease management, and it will be aimed at new growers.

I had several inquiries on the pruning wound protection in last few weeks, so, here's some information about it. Pruning wound treatment has been discussed in different places and with different contexts. In California where a disease called Eutypa dieback is a big issue, they tested a wound paste with boron (they called Biopaste), and it seems to protect wounds from the infection. In Australia and New Zealand, they have tested a product called Garrison which seems to work as well. However, these products are not registered, but in VA, Eutypa is not as a big problem as in CA. Thus, I'm not sure they will help us much, even if they are registered. One material that has been registered in VA is Topsin-M. It will be applied as a paint-on ( It is a section 24(c) label for local use in VA. Please see the supplemental label here. ) One of potential advantages of Topsin-M is that the label is also for Botryosphaeria which is very common in VA. If you would like to test this p