Virginia Grape Disease Updates

At Winchester, night time temperature in recent few days is getting pretty low to the point that relative humidity during the night is close to 100%. In addition, we are looking at a thunderstorm forecast tonight that will bring high relative humidity. These conditions favor downy mildew development because downy mildew pathogen prefers to produce spores under dark, humid conditions. At this point, you do not need to worry about downy mildew infection on clusters; however, they can still infect leaves. Often time, you will initially see infection on the top of the canopy because younger leaves are more susceptible than older ones. Losing the top leaves and laterals are not a big deal; however, once the infection gets severe, it can defoliate many leaves rather quickly (as in the picture above), and that can affect maturing process. As usual, it is much better and easier to have a preventative program than trying to play the catch-up game. There are many good protective mater...

There are chance of rain (40-70% across the state) predicted during tonight to Saturday. We really need some rains, so, I'm hoping that we all will get a decent rain.  We will see... Now probably many of you are considering disease management at or after veraison.  One of diseases you may be concerned at this time of the season are late season rots (sour rot and/or Botrytis gray mold, caused by Aspergillus niger, Alternaria tenuis, Botrytis cinerea, Cladosporium herbarum, Rhizopus arrhizus, Penicillium sp. , and others).  These late season rots come in when fruit sugar content accumulates around 8%, and often times, white varieties with tight clusters such as Vignoles and Chardonnay, tend to get this disease more than other varieties because of the structure of the cluster which can hold water inside and also because of the fair skin. The sour rot pathogens, including Botrytis, are opportunistic in nature, and the damage and the risk will increase if Botytis rot is in...