Disease and insect damage severely impact the marketability of your strawberry crop. When producing berries for the fresh market, appearance is everything. Plan ahead and take steps early in the growing season to control Grey mold (Botrytis cinerea) and tarnished plant bug (Lygus lineolaris) to help reduce berry damage and serious losses.
Fungal disease control crucial for quality strawberries
Grey mold caused by Botrytis cinerea is an important, widespread and destructive strawberry disease in Canada. Spores, which overwinter in dead leaves and fruit debris, are scattered by wind and water to infect flower buds and blossoms during spring. Spores can also infect green fruit, lying dormant until berries ripen. Disease presence is strongly related to temperature and moisture that occurs two to four weeks prior to harvest.
Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) IPM recommendations include these management practices:
- After bed renovation, rotovate soil to work in crop debris.
- Manage row width and spacing to enable adequate air movement and rapid canopy drying.
- Time irrigation so blossoms and leaves dry quickly.
- Judiciously use nitrogen. Lush growth is more susceptible to infection and slower to dry after rainfall or irrigation.
- Apply fungicide starting at bloom and throughout the season as conditions dictate.
Arysta LifeScience offers innovative products that can protect your berry crop for improved fruit quality and yield. ELEVATE® 50 WDG Fungicide can help manage Grey mold caused by B. cinerea. It features a unique active ingredient, fenhexamid, that has no effect on most beneficial insects and no known cross-resistance to other commonly used fungicides. It can be used from bloom to within one day of harvest (one-day pre-harvest interval).
Tarnished plant bug control reduces damaged strawberries
Tarnished plant bug adults overwinter in a wide variety of plant materials — from dead weeds and leaf litter to ditch banks and neighboring fields — and emerge in early spring. Among the most damaging of the true bugs, tarnished plant bugs suck sap from new strawberry shoots and flower buds, causing blossom losses. Eggs are laid on plants once temperatures reach at least 20 degrees C.
Tarnished plant bug nymphs, which cause most of the economic damage, generally appear during bloom to feed on developing berries. Nymph feeding leads to small, seedy and misshapen berries unsuitable for fresh markets. It is important to identify nymphs on plants early to determine if control is required in order to reduce damage, however; they can be hard to find because of their size, colour and speed.
Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and OMAFRA IPM Program recommends these practices:
- Manage weeds and remove plant debris in and around strawberry rows especially early in the season and after harvest to limit host and overwintering sites.
- Alfalfa and hay fields near strawberry crops should not be cut until after berries are harvested to avoid insect movement.
- Scout fields early and often for adults and nymphs.
- Apply an appropriate insecticide when the threshold is reached.
One unique solution to help manage tarnished plant bug in strawberry is RIMON® 10 EC Insecticide. The active ingredient, novaluron, is an insect growth regulator that controls tarnished plant bug when applied just before egg hatch. Novaluron works by disrupting cuticle formation and deposition during immature life stages. This mode of action makes RIMON an ideal candidate for resistance management programs.
