With all of the recent rain and plenty of green and ripe fruit we need to be on the lookout for diseases.
Diseases like Botrytis and Anthracnose Fruit Rot can cause serious damage and reduce yields if not controlled early.
The good news is that we have several products to control both diseases. The key is to be smart with labeled products. No matter the disease Captan should be the backbone of a spray program in Strawberries.
For Botrytis products like Switch, Elevate, Inspire, Luna and others work well. Anthracnose is usually controlled with products containing strobilurin fungicides. However both diseases can, and have, developed resistance to many of the products we use.
This is why we need to rotate products with different modes of action (MOA) or FRAC codes. UGA also provides a useful service to heop us develop spray programs. You can send samples to Tifton for resistance screening. Being part of the Southeastern Small Fruit Consortium gives us a limited amount of free screenings so I encourage growers to use this service. You can learn more about how to sample and where to send them Here.
If you have any further questions about disease control or resistance screening contact your Extension office.
