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Fusarium Strikes Early in 2018
Waaaay too early to be seeing Fusarium infecting strawberry plants, but here it is.
I was contacted two weeks ago by the grower who was seeing some plant collapse in his field (Photo 1) and had him submit samples and then went out personally to check it out. Granted, this field has a history of Fusarium infection, but what makes this disturbing is that the field was flat fumed this past fall with chloropicrin at 350# per acre under TIF and the plants are being managed exceedingly well (Photo 3) by a very experienced grower.
Normally, we would be seeing these symptoms when the plants load up with fruit and it gets hot in late May and early June which puts the strain on a compromised root and crown system. Not now, when the plants have nary a fruit, are small and the temperatures are cool.
Not happy about this at all.
Diagnosis of the Fusarium by Steven Koike, Trical Diagnostics.
Photo 1: Fusarium affected strawberry plants, picture taken April 5, 2018.
Photo 2: Crown sliced in half to find darkening indicative of pathogen infection.
Photo 3: Rest of field looks like this, well managed and plenty of production potential.
Comments:
Just as in human pathology, sometimes you just don't want to hear what the doctor has found to making one ill because it could be really serious, but on the other hand without knowing exactly what the problem is we can't address it correctly. On point, I just had a great sit down yesterday with Mssrs. Koike and another lead scientist from Trical to put together a research plan of attack on this pathogen. We'll get there, eventually.
Cultivar is Albion. Beautiful plants, if you can keep the disease off!
Mark
Posted by Joe Bennett on April 7, 2018 at 7:14 AM