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Posts Tagged: disease
Lawn-pocalypse! Surviving Drought
Ah, summer! The season of sunburns, pool parties, and… lawn droughts. If your once lush, green carpet now looks like a crunchy brown doormat, you're not alone. Let's dive into why your yard is staging a dramatic death scene and what you can do to...
Bermuda grass and weeds overtaking drought stressed turf grass.
Citrus News
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citrus
Praise the Rain, Pass the Fungicide
Although, it's probably too late for the fungicide to correct Citrus Brown Rot
and Septoria on coastal lemons.
In normal rainfall years, a skirt spray of copper is done to prevent rain splash bringing spores of various Phytophthora species in contact with fruit. The spray is done the fall especially if high rainfall is expected that year, and can be reapplied in January/February if indeed rain has arrived. The spray is usually only up about 4 feet from the ground, rarely needed above that. But this year, there has been lots of wind and brown rot has appeared throughout tree. There has been lots of wind to spread the spores and create disease in fruit quite above ground level. Fruit on these trees is going to need to be selectively picked to avoid the infected fruit, adding to harvest costs.
https://ipm.ucanr.edu/agriculture/citrus/brown-rot/
Septoria is less common than brown rot along the coast where a skirt spray is or used to be normal practice. This was before the drought and low lemon prices made the practice less common. In the case of septoria, a whole tree copper spray is recommended in the fall. The disease, although not unseen, is not common, so most growers would apply only a copper skirt spray for brown rot. With this 2023/2024 rain year, the disease has showed up in many orchards, and of course, it is above the brown rot spray line in the canopy.
https://ipm.ucanr.edu/agriculture/citrus/septoria-spot/
Both of these diseases are going to cause problems for growers, because once in the fruit, it's not treatable or salable.
Almond growers should prepare for possibility of unusual disease outbreak
Wet winter, El Niño create favorable conditions for aerial Phytophthora pathogen
With heavy rains in the forecast amid strengthening El Niño conditions, almond growers should be on the lookout for a rare disease that can cause severe damage to their orchards, according to Florent Trouillas, a University of California Cooperative Extension specialist in fruit and nut pathology.
Phytophthora, soilborne microorganisms dubbed “water molds” because of their dependence on water, typically cause root and crown rot at the base of trees. But a few aerial Phytophthora can travel upwards and infect the higher parts of the tree. One species – Phytophthora syringae – is drawing special attention due to an unprecedented outbreak last winter, fueled by the atmospheric rivers that lashed California.
“It was found statewide – meaning in every almond-producing county – and disease incidence in orchards ranged from 10% of the trees infected to 75%,” said Trouillas, a UC Davis plant pathologist whose lab is based at UC Agriculture and Natural Resources' Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier.
Trouillas and his colleagues, UC Davis graduate student Alejandro Hernandez and UC Riverside plant pathology professor Jim Adaskaveg, recently published a detailed online article describing the pathogen, which can infect a range of crops but mainly impacts almonds in California.
Although it doesn't kill the tree, the disease causes branch dieback that requires significant additional work and expense for almond growers. In 2022, almonds were the state's fourth-highest valued commodity, at $3.52 billion.
During last year's aerial Phytophthora outbreak, researchers also observed a new and troubling phenomenon: P. syringae, historically known to attack the cuts caused by pruning, was directly infecting the young shoots on almond trees – without any wounds.
“This was really the first time we had seen widespread evidence of infection on the twigs,” Trouillas said.
Although generally rare, outbreaks of P. syringae have been traditionally associated with wet El Niño years, according to Trouillas – and recent and persistent rain across the state should have growers on high alert.
Prune in dry weather, monitor, mitigate if necessary
While almond growers tend to prune during the downtime of winter, they should keep an eye on the forecast and aim for a 10- to 14-day window of dry weather to perform those tasks, whether training young trees or maintaining the established ones.
“If growers were to prune around a rain event – before, during or shortly after – this increases the likelihood of infection because this pathogen moves around with water,” Trouillas explained.
Researchers speculate that P. syringae, normally found in the soil, gets carried into the upper parts of a tree through strong winds and heavy rain. Alternatively, harvest processes like shaking and sweeping also produce air movements that may blow the microorganism into the canopy, where it waits for a favorable wet environment. The pathogen then attacks the wounds or young shoots, producing characteristic cankers and gumming.
The patterns and colors of the gum balls are keys to diagnosing an infection of this particular aerial Phytophthora. Starting around bloom time (mid-February), growers should monitor pruning wounds and young shoots on their trees, especially in the canopy, for signs of the disease.
The unique coloration of the gum balls – ranging from gold and amber to dark burgundy to bright red (see photos) – generally indicates P. syringae infection. But growers are urged to contact their local Cooperative Extension advisor for confirmation.
“It is super critical for growers that, whenever they see gumming, not to assume that it is this aerial phytophthora, because there are many other diseases that can cause gumming on the tree,” Trouillas said.
If the diagnosis is confirmed, growers may apply a compound that can mitigate the infection. The plant pathologists' recent writeup describes several curative treatment options, as well as a preventive measure that reduces the amount of pathogen in the soil and thus the likelihood of infection.
For more information on the pathogen's history and biology, as well as various options for disease management, visit the article on Sacramento Valley Orchard Source: https://www.sacvalleyorchards.com/almonds/trunk-soil-diseases/aerial-phytophthora-outbreaks-in-wet-years.
Winter atmospheric rivers gave pathogens, diseases path to infect crops
Outbreaks similar to El Niño-influenced issues of the 1990s
The wave of atmospheric rivers that swept across the state this winter has created the right conditions for plant pathogens that haven't been seen for decades in California. University of California, Davis, plant pathologist Florent “Flo” Trouillas is getting more calls from growers and farm advisors concerned about potential crop damage.
“Generally, whenever you have rain events, you're going to have problems,” said Trouillas, a Cooperative Extension specialist who is based at the Kearney Agricultural Research and Extension Center in Parlier. “In wet years we get really busy because most pathogens need and like water.”
Trouillas is like a disease detective. He splits his time between the field and the lab, working to diagnose pathogens, diseases and other ailments that strike fruit and nut crops such as almonds, cherries, olives and pistachios.
On a recent visit to an almond orchard near Fresno, Trouillas joined Mae Culumber, a nut crops farm advisor for UC Cooperative Extension Fresno County. A few weeks earlier, the two had walked the orchard, taking note of the base of some trees that had gumming — a thick, jelly-looking substance indicating a pathogen had taken hold.
“A lot of what Florent is doing is trying to assess patterns on a landscape,” Culumber said. “Sometimes things may look like they are one thing, but it could be another problem.”
When the two returned weeks later, the amber-colored gumming had moved into the canopy, looking like gumballs stuck to branches, some of which were already dead. “It's getting out of control from before,” Trouillas says. “This branch was killed. This is widespread.”
From the field to the lab
Lab testing confirmed what Trouillas believed was the culprit: Phytophthora syringae, a pathogen that can affect almond crops but is rarely seen in California. If it is found, generally the site of infection are wounds caused by pruning, but that is not the case here, where the infection began in the canopy at twigs, or small branches.
It is a threat to a key crop, which according to the California Department of Food and Agriculture, generates $5 billion annually. The last time Phytophthora syringae hit California was in the 1990s after a series of El Niño-influenced storms. Trouillas, who has a photographic memory, remembered reading about it in an old manual.
“It's rare for California and one that we see mostly following atmospheric rivers,” he says.
“The disease will only happen following these extremely wet winters.”
Phytophthora is soilborne, mostly found in tree roots, and doesn't generally spread up into branches. But the intense storms created the right conditions for the pathogen to “swim” up trunks as winds blew spores into the air and rain dropped them back down into the canopy, Trouillas said.
Some of the trees in this orchard will die; others can be saved by pruning infected branches and applying a recommended fungicide, he said.
Identification, diagnosis, education
Trouillas is one of more than 50 Cooperative Extension specialists at UC Davis and each is charged with identifying problems and developing solutions for those issues in support of agriculture, the ecosystem and communities throughout the state.
In his role, Trouillas focuses not only on pathology and research but also on educating growers, nursery staff, pest control advisers and others in agriculture about ways to manage potential threats and how to prevent crop damage.
“His role is very crucial,” said Mohammad Yaghmour, an orchard systems advisor for UC Cooperative Extension Kern County. “He's not only on this mission to educate growers but he's also a source of education for us.”
Trouillas typically conducts one or two site visits a week, usually after a farm advisor reaches out about a problem they can't solve on their own.
“This allows us to be at the forefront of disease detections in California,” he said.
He likens these visits to house calls a doctor would make, only to fields instead. And one of those calls recently took him to a cherry orchard in Lodi.
“These guys help me quite a bit,” said Andrew Vignolo, a pest control adviser with Wilbur-Ellis who asked for a consult. “I bug them a lot.”
The visit starts like any consult in a doctor's office, only the questions come fast as they walk around the Lodi orchard where branches are dying, there is gumming and the trees appear stressed. Some look to be sunburned from exposure. Old pruning wounds show cankers, indicating that past disease treatments didn't get rid of whatever was affecting the trees.
Trouillas asks about the cultivar of the trees because some varieties are more susceptible to pests or diseases. He focuses on stress because that opens the door to disease.
Do they prune in the dormant winter months or in summer when pathogens are more prevalent? Does the soil get tested? How old are the trees? What about nutrition?
“I'm trying to figure out how they got infected so bad,” Trouillas said, walking the orchard. “Bacterial canker is a very mysterious disease.”
He thinks it might be a bacterial canker disease and shaves some bark to take to the lab for testing. He wants to come back next winter to take some samples to see where the pathogen is overwintering.
“We'll know in a few weeks if we have a fighting chance,” Vignolo said.
Be it Lodi, Fresno or elsewhere in the state, Trouillas focuses on local conditions. But what is learned in one field can be passed on to others, providing early warnings or advice for those in similar situations. “All these efforts at collaboration, from the field, to the lab, going through research projects, there's only one goal here — to help the farmers of California.”
