US (CA): Mild winter not a friend to summer strawberry crops

Strawberry plants at the Hardy Berry Farm are putting out pretty white blossoms, but there’s one catch. It’s January. Some of the farm’s three acres of plants started blooming this month because the unusually warm weather is imitating the spring temperatures in which they thrive. “The biggest concern is that they’re not going into full dormancy,” said Glen Potter, operations manager at the farm. “Each bloom we have right now is one less bloom we’ll get in the spring.” Guido Schnabel, a plant pathologist at Clemson University, says a combination of wet weather and fungal resistance to pesticides could threaten South Carolina’s summer staple.

“If the wrong products are used during weather conditions suitable for gray mold disease we will experience ‘the perfect storm,’ ” he said in a news advisory. Fungus causes gray mold disease that can blight tissue and rot fruit. Clemson research has shown that the fungus Botrytis cinerea has developed resistance to pesticides, Schnabel said. If weather suddenly turns cold that could both bolster and doom some crops, Potter said. Blooms will die in freezing weather, and dead blooms can harbor disease such as gray mold. On the other hand, a month-long cold snap would nurture buds into healthy berries come spring. Potter said he is not worried about losing the crop, and at this point it appears that the crop will be a little smaller than last year.

Source: independentmail.com