By Clint Thompson
Georgia’s bout with neopestalotiopsis fruit rot disease in strawberries this year means producers need to be more cautious in how they order their plants every summer.
Jeff Cook, University of Georgia Cooperative Extension agriculture and natural resources (ANR) agent for Peach and Taylor counties, believes growers need to spread the risk among multiple nurseries. It will help them better avoid the disease which can be tied to nurseries.
“I don’t ever want to point my finger at one nursery, because it’s never one nursery that has a problem. It seems to work its way around the whole industry. You might have one farm that had an issue and 300 farms that didn’t have any problems, and next year it’s totally different,” Cook said. “We don’t expect to get 100% pristine shipment of plants, but if we can spread our risk out among different nurseries then it definitely can help.”
Disease Background
The disease has been a major concern ever since it was first discovered during the 2018-19 season across five farms in Florida. It was attributed to one nursery source in North Carolina. More than 20 farms experienced the disease during the 2019-20 season, and the disease was attributed to two nursery sources early in the season in North Carolina and Canada.
This year’s crop in Georgia was significantly impacted.
“It was everywhere. Honestly, some farms, when they planted, they were refunded up to 40% of what they bought, because plants were so bad from the start,” Cook said. “We had trouble detecting it early. Everywhere that we had issues with reduced yield and reduced plant vigor, we were finally able to detect the disease, everywhere we had those issues it was always neopestalotiopsis.”