Skip to main content

Happy 4th!

The thunderstorm on 7/01/09 lasted a little over an hour (0.73 inches); however, RH remained high for about 9 hours with an average temperature of 65F. Thus the event was long and warm enough for Phomopsis, downy mildew, and black rot infection, and powdery mildew ascospore discharge.

Also, we had nights with relatively high RH (>80%) in 6/29 and 7/2. If these are isolated events, you do not need to worry about; however, as we know, the early part of June was very wet and we had many nights with a favorable condition for downy mildew sporulation. Sure enough, when I checked vines yesterday, we had a lot of sporulations under side of leaves.
If you have seen these spores on many of your leaves, you may want to think about protecting healthy leaves and berries from next infection event, or use materials with a curative activity (Phosphorus acid, Ridomil etc).

The other disease I found quite a bit in our untreated vines are black rot. This is one of diseases which you really need to be on top of it to secure your yield. Here are some convincing pictures.

Here, you can see a path of infection from a leaf to berries...
Now you can clearly understand why it was named black rot...
Once again, the critical period of infection on berries for black rot, downy mildew, and powdery mildew is 4-5 weeks from bloom. If you protect your vines during this period, you should not see damages like these. In fact, a vine next to these vines which received a treatment is nice and clean!

I hope you will have a nice July 4th weekend. If you travel somewhere, please drive safely.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Disease risks from yesterday's rain

Winchester area received precipitations from thunderstorms yesterday.  It started around 3:30PM and lasted until 7:00PM.  The actual amount of precipitation was not high (0.05 in) compared with other northern VA regions where a severe thunderstorm warning was issued, but since the ending part of the thunderstorm hit during the evening, the relative humidity was high (>90%) until 2 AM or so.  Thus, it accounted for 11.5 hours of wetness with the average temperature of 73F.  It was warm and long enough for Phomopsis, black rot, and downy mildew. We are still having chances of rain (40-60%) until Monday.

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 e...

EPA is reviewing captan

Captan, which we use extensively to manage downy mildew, Phomopsis, ripe rot, and other grape diseases, is currently under review by the EPA. In order to keep captan as one of our tools to control grape diseases,  please respond to the EPA's registration review page to post your comment  (will open the EPA page). With increasing cases of fungicide resistance with newer products in our region, it is very important for the majority of commercial grape growers located east of the Rockies to keep older multi-site materials such as captan to be used as a backbone of the spray program.  Also, please forward the message to other producers and stakeholders who should respond to the need for this fungicide in our industry.