It is hard to believe, but it has been almost one year since our horticulturist, Dr. Rongcai Yuan passed away. We will hold a one-year memorial event on April 14th from 8:30 AM (right after a breakfast meeting for local tree fruit growers) at AHS AREC at Winchester, VA. We will dedicate a memorial tree and a stone plaque at the event. Light refreshments will be served. The event is open to the public, so, if you knew Dr. Yuan, please join us. We are also requesting donations for the tree, plaque, and Dr. Yuan's family members. If you would like to donate, please contact me.
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...
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