Root Asphyxiation in Strawberry

Interesting farm call here that at first piqued my attention as a possibly serious disease situation but in the end turned out to not be.

See the photos below.  Affected strawberry plants presented with discolored leaves and stunted growth typical of nutrient deficiency or viral infection.  On being removed from the soil, root growth was also limited, but the crown was not discolored as it would be for many soil pathogen infections.  

We did also note that there was a lot of water saturation around the affected plants, not always but especially marked in low lying areas of the field.  We had the impression that maybe there was less saturation around those plants that were healthy (cool thing was that the grower let me pull up healthy plants for comparison, provided that I put them back in again).

To be thorough, I submitted a number of sick plants to the diagnostic laboratory at TriCal, and they came back negative for disease, leaving us to make the conclusion that the plants are indeed suffering from the water saturation quite possibly exacerbated by the recent rains. In other words, the roots of these plants are being asphyxiated by the excess of water around them.  The discoloration of the leaves comes from nutrient uptake being compromised by the lack of air in the soil, also not coincidentally resulting in a stunted plant.

Advice to grower was to watch water use in those affected areas for the next couple of weeks, and to look at ways of aerating the soil around the plant and bed.

Stunted discolored plant. Excavation and partitioning of the crown gave no sign of disease.

Probable nutrient deficiency symptom caused by overly water saturated bed.

Notice area that is affected, this was the lower end of the field with water drainage passing through it.

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