What's All This Now?

Return to Strawberries

This is interesting. In the midst of all this heat and dry I found a big run of anthracnose infected fruit, and the grower shared with me that something like 5 to 10% of his crop has the disease currently. For those who think the grower or I might be confused about this, have a look at the pictures below taken Monday early morning.

So what I did was contact Steve Koike and ask him, that seemed like a smart thing to do. He answered and said that at some point there must have been enough moisture to activate the spores. It does boil down to the "disease triangle" and each of the three requirements must be in place. We have the host (strawberries), the pathogen (Colletotrichum) and now all we need to do is have the right condition (a lot of moisture). Checking around with other growers in that area, it does seem that very close to the coast the dews over the past week were really heavy, in one case so much that one manager had to delay a spray. So the third requirement has been fulfilled after all.

Since I was able to surveil a number of fields in both Santa Cruz and Monterey counties these past few days on a soil sampling run, I found that sure enough even a little further inland the disease to is nowhere to be found. It truly does depend on the right conditions.

Not the most encouraging thing to see at first light on the farm - a berry spotted with anthracnose.