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  • Mark Hoffman (North Carolina State) has developed another webinar that may be of interest to many of you. Please see the link below to find this webinar and related PowerPoints. Enjoy. Link to the webinar: https://grapes.ces.ncsu.edu/grape-diary/webinars-2020/#Harvest

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  • Mark Hoffman (North Carolina State) conducted a webinar on muscadine disease management yesterday. It included extension personnel and producers. If you are interested in a review of muscadine diseases and their management, please go to the link below. I cover all the major diseases of muscadine in my talk, and there is a helpful question…

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  • We will soon be observing symptoms of Pierce’s disease in susceptible grape varieties — Vitis vinifera and some hybrids such as Chambourcin. Unfortunately, winter temperatures have now been mild for several years, so we are seeing an uptick in Pierce’s disease at higher and higher elevations in Georgia and throughout the Southeast. Symptoms normally show…

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  • Disease identification in wine grapes can be confusing, even for the “experts,” so it is good to continually reinforce your knowledge of diseases and their symptoms (spots or discoloration on a leaf for example) and signs (actual pathogen fruiting structures and other tissues you can see with the naked eye or a hand lens) —…

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  • If you listen to podcasts, you might be interested in listening to the podcast found in the link below. This is from a new University of Arkansas podcast site that is sponsored by the Southern Region Small Fruit Consortium, the same group that funds much of the training of county agents on wine grape production,…

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  • We are within a few weeks of the anticipated initial emergence of grape root borer (GRB) adults in North Georgia. If you are planning on implementing mating disruption as a management tactic for GRB and you haven’t deployed your pheromone dispensers/ties, now is the time to get those distributed.  If you are unfamiliar with grape…

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  • Today, I observed downy mildew for the first time this year. It was on Lenoir vines in west Georgia, and this indicates that producers should be scouting for it throughout the state. In addition, if you have not already done so, I would consider incorporating highly efficacious materials such as Zampro, Revus, Ridomil Gold MZ…

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  • Powdery mildew is just starting to show up on untreated plants in the research vineyard at Blairsville, GA. The photograph below was taken today, but infections likely started occurring some time ago. I hope you will not see it yet in well managed vineyards, but recent rains and other difficulties may have hampered spray programs.…

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  • Much of the wine grape pathology research we have conducted in Georgia over the last 2-3 years has been associated with resistance management of fungal pathogens such as downy mildew, powdery mildew, Botrytis and others. Alternation or tank-mixing of different fungicide classes is critical for prevention of resistance development. Under the direction of Dr. Walt…

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  • Vineyards in many of the northern counties of Georgia have received cold damage on multiple occasions this year.  The most recent damage occurred 10 May, which means that grapes were phenologically more advanced that one would have observed with past frost/freeze events.  In fact, this is the latest event of this nature that I remember…

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