By Frank Giles
The University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS) blueberry team took to the road in July for their summer educational seminars. Meetings were held in four locations in blueberry production areas.
Doug Phillips, UF/IFAS blueberry Extension coordinator, help planned the meeting. He said the meetings went well and touched on local concerns.
“The genesis or idea for these meetings, as I do these end-of-season surveys with growers across the state, one of the comments that kept coming up was we’d like to have some local meetings that not only have UF faculty presentations but also have opportunities for grower roundtables to discuss issues that are impacting them,” Phillips said. “That’s what got us interested in setting up those meetings.”
Phil Harmon, UF/IFAS professor, was among the presenters during the meetings. He addressed leaf rust, which is becoming more of a challenge because more and more growers are establishing evergreen blueberry programs.
“Leaf rust has been around for a long time; for as long we’ve been growing blueberries in Florida,” Harmon said. “But in the last seven years or so, we have seen increased incidence and severity impacting our crop. This is partly because we’ve switched to mixed evergreen and deciduous production (in Central Florida).”
In the deciduous system, leaves are dropped from the plant and resets the foliar system. In evergreen plantings, the leaves are held, which provides for more opportunity for disease incidence.
Harmon noted there are some good fungicide options for leaf rust management. Proline 480 SC, Quilt XL and Propulse fungicides he ranked as excellent control options. There are other products that are good and should be used in rotation to help avoid resistance.
“Ideally, we use these products before the leaf rust symptoms become severe,” Harmon said. “This disease starts progressing slowly, then it rapidly increases in an exponential phase. If we wait too long, we’ve lost our opportunity to prevent infection and use these products in ways that are most efficient.”
Growers at the meeting noted the quest for earliness to hopefully hit a better market window is pushing more to move to evergreen systems. Ryan Atwood, Amber Brooke Farms, also noted the urgency to move toward mechanical harvest to help the Florida industry remain competitive with surging imports from Mexico.
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