|
Project Leader(s): William
W. Turechek and Marvin P. Pritts
Type of grant: Monitoring,
forecasting, and economic thresholds
Project location(s): Findings
can be applied across the Northeast
Abstract: Leaf spot, leaf blight, and
leaf scorch are foliar diseases of strawberry commonly found in perennial plantings
throughout North America. These diseases are suspected to adversely affect yield,
winter hardiness, and the overall production life of a planting. A three year
study was implemented to determine to what extent these diseases impact yield
and the production life of a planting, and to define when it is economically
feasible to manage them. The first year of the study focused on: 1) Gathering
baseline yield data in established plots in Ithaca, NY; 2) Creating a disease
gradient across these plots so that we may effectively study how disease impacts
yield over the production life of the planting; 3) Establishing a _ acre strawberry
planting in Geneva, NY with varieties that are differentially susceptible to
the diseases under study; and 4) Developing and refining experimental procedures
to look at the effects of disease under experimental conditions. From the above,
we were able to establish that yield across all experimental plots located in
Ithaca was statistically identical this year (as we expected). Therefore, our
hypothesis is that any future reduction in yield would be directly correlated
with the disease gradient, i.e., the lowest yielding plots would have the highest
level of disease. For greenhouse/laboratory-based experiments, we had to work
through several glitches in the experimental procedures before we were able
to make any headway. We started work with leaf scorch (we will look closely
at the other diseases this winter). Preliminary results showed that photosynthesis
declined rapidly and approached zero as leaf scorch severity increased. This
implies that moderate to heavily infected leaves are contributing very little
to the development of the plant and would presumably have a negative impact
on yield. Identifying these types of relationships for the other diseases under
study will allow us to make formal recommendations as to when management is
economically feasible. The second year of the study will bring to light much
about these diseases and their affect on production.
|
