Skip to main content

Rain, rain, rain, again... Botrytis, Sour Rot, and Downy??

I thought I would wait until the rain stops to update the blog, but rains are keep coming and even when we do not receive precipitations, the air has been so damp that the relative humidity has been above 90% for a while.  It started late night on 9/4, and still going.  So far, I counted about 90+ hours of estimated leaf wetness. The temperature has been between low 60's to mid 70's.  This has been ideal condition for both Botrytis and downy mildew to develop.  As for downy mildew, your berries should be resistant to infection, thus, concern is on foliage infection.  Vines need healthy leaf areas for accumulation of carbohydrate into main trunk in order to survive the winter.  With a concern on the PHI, one of Phosphorous acid or Phosphonate materials should be a good choice.  They also provide a good kick-back activity too.

I have covered Botrytis earlier in this blog, so, please click here and here for more information.  If you decided to make an application, please be aware about the PHI, some Botrytis materials have a 14-day or longer PHI.

You may also concerned about sour rot.  In general, sour rot control need to be based on general vine management because it is typically initiated with a wounding event (insect, bird, hail, etc).  Thus, the first question is whether they have issue with bees or birds in their vineyards.  If they do, management of bees and birds will be the first priority. 

The other potential causes are early infection by either powdery mildew or Botrytis.  When powdery mildew infect berries early in the season, skin can erupt as berries getting larger.  When Botrytis infects flower, it can resides in fruit tissues and cause disease when berries are mature.

As for protective chemical, a product called Switch lists sour rot and Botrytis.  Switch has a 7-day PHI.  Other options are Pristine, captan, and ziram.  It seems that all of them provide some level of protection against sour rot, and rotation on captan and ziram showed a good efficacy on one of trials done in PSU.  Since we may be potentially dealing with a fungal complex (general yeast, Penicillium, Alternalia, etc), I tend to recommend use of captan or ziram because they are less prone to have fungicide resistance.  Ziram has a 21-day PHI, so, it is probably not the best item to be used at this time of the season.  Captan has a 0-day PHI (with a 48-hour REI).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Downy mildew gallery

At Winchester, we had light rain events during the night of 6/12/09, but it was short events and the relative humidity was low (80% or so), thus it probably did not promote any infections. However, we are experiencing continuing favorable nights for downy mildew sporulation (average T>55F, high RH (80-100%)) for 10 days now. Yesterday, we conducted a formal disease assessment, and observed first incidence of powdery mildew for this season. We had plenty of infection events in last two months, so it was not surprising. At this point, it is a trace level of infection on untreated vines. Downy mildew was the major disease so far. We had up to 40% incidence on untreated vines. Next runner-up was black rot. It varies vine to vine, but some of vine had 10-15% incidence. Phomopsis was omnipresent as I expected from early May rain falls, but severity was low overall. We will examine diseases again in the near future, and I will update as the season goes. Here is downy mildew ga

Season's Greetings!

I hope you and your family have a good holiday season and a Happy (and safe) New Year! Thanks again for your support of our programs. Here are some recent media highlights. 😉 The link will open a new window. AHS AREC promotional video  that highlights some of our activities. The link did not work... It asks you to log in to VT. I will request the IT people to change the setting, but in a meantime, here's the same video. We also appeared in  the Library of Congress project “Winery Workers of Virginia”. One more announcement: I will be moving this blog to a new location ( ext.grapepathology.org ) early next year. I had to make a change due to the email subscription service, which has been terminated.  You do not need to change your bookmark or your email subscription. The URL will be forwarded to a new site and your email subscription has been moved to a new site already. 

Recent downy mildew risk events

 It seems that several rain events have happened over the course of the past two weeks or so. Here is a summary of recent downy mildew risk events, based on the NEWA stations and DMCast. Bristol, VA Fifteen days with potential DM infection event(s) since Sept 1. The latest event happened last Sunday. Floyd, VA Eleven days with potential DM infection event(s) since Sept 1. The last event happened last Friday. Charles City, VA Twelve days with potential DM infection event(s) since Sept 1. The latest event happened yesterday. Central VA Since there was a wide variation among stations, I am listing several around Central VA. Tyro, VA Nine days with potential DM infection event(s) since Sept 1. The latest event happened yesterday. Red Hill and Crozet, VA Only one day with potential DM infection event(s) since Sept 1. Olympic Lake Thirteen days with potential DM infection event(s) since Sept 1. The latest event happened last Sunday. Washington, VA Eight days with potential DM infection event