In today’s Almond Matters, brought to you by Valent, growers are in the midst of applying their summer disease prevention programs. As the season progresses, growers will want to continue to closely monitor the orchards for potential disease pressures that may not have been addressed with spring applications.
“There’s a number of diseases that can impact growers especially as you move into summer. Primarily, the ones I think about are Alternaria; in some areas you may have issues with rust,” said Pat Clay, Manager for Field Development for Valent USA. “Then as we’re starting to approach hull split you really want to be thinking about managing hull rot.”
Growers have already been implementing their programs for addressing rust and Alternaria, which began back in April. Preventative sprays throughout the spring have been particularly important this year as the weather patterns have been going back and forth between warm and dry and cool and damp. Clay noted that disease pressure seems to be a bit higher this year and growers will want to stay active in their application program through summer. “What we’ve seen really work well is, coming back in with this June spray with a FRAC Group 3 fungicide such as Quash, providing really good results,” Clay explained.
The focus of summer disease prevention will somewhat shift as the season moves along, with more attention given to issues of hull rot. Growers that have a history of the disease in their orchard will want to pay particular attention early on, to hopefully get in front of it and preventing the issue from getting worse.
“Hull rot is a really insidious disease in that it is very difficult to manage,” said Clay. “If you have an orchard that’s heavy with hull rot and you’re seeing a lot of limb dieback, that type of thing, you really want to get on top of it with an early hull split type spray as well as – depending on the species of hull rot that you have – potentially a hull split spray as well.”
Listen to the report below.