Water Damage on Strawberry

The fairly heavy rains over the past weekend (1.06" from CIMIS station #111 in Watsonville), have given people concern about what sort of damage our strawberry crop has sustained.  Indeed, a front page above the fold article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel this past Monday expressed similar concern: 

https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2019/05/20/strawberry-growers-lose-thousands-of-berries-to-recent-rains/

Well you are in luck.  As part of my previously blogged Botrytis trial, I am evaluating fruit on a weekly basis and was able to examine fruit harvested on Monday, right after the bulk of the rain had passed.  Variety is Monterey, fertility practices are normal and picking is twice weekly.

Photo 1 below shows a basket of fruit held two days out at room temperature.  They look pretty good, in fact taking an average of the water damaged fruit (see photos 2 and 3 for what that looks like) from the study it comes out to be a bit less than 9 % of the total.  Not bad, and is remarkable but not unique to this field judging by the number of trucks loaded with fresh fruit bound for the cooler I saw on my rounds yesterday.

 

 

Typical basket composition for Monterey fruit picked May 20, after an inch of rain and evaluated May 22..

Typical case of water damage, soft spot on fruit, lustrous and very soft to the touch.

Comparison of common water damage to fruit tip to fruit infected with Botrytis.

This one is a toughy. Soft spot, but discolor diagnostic of Botrytis; my call is disease.

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