 So I'm Cassie Conner. I'm the director of the Auburn University Plant Diagnostic Lab. And so this year was a very wet year, so we saw the typical wet weather diseases that we always see. We see a lot of bacterial diseases, a lot of root rods, a lot of foliar, fungal problems. So I thought that today I would just show some of the more interesting things that we found this year. So the first thing was that we found citrus canker in Alabama. And so citrus canker has been a huge problem in Florida and Louisiana and it's been found in isolated parts of Texas. And I think we all realized that it was eventually going to come over here because the pathogen wasn't going to stop at the Florida border. But we haven't found it until just this year. So it's caused by a bacterium. It's Santhomonas exonopotus pathivaricitri. And this pathogen causes defoliation. It can cause premature fruit drop, twig dieback, a general tree decline, and then fruit drop. So you get these spots that are like raised and kind of quirky. If you can see it in the second picture here, they're kind of raised and they look like little pustules. And then they're surrounded by very, very bright yellow halos. It's very easy to tell that it's citrus canker. It can be identified visually, although since it's a federally regulated pathogen, it has to come to a lab and be tested to confirm that it's positive. So this pathogen, it is highly contagious, very easily spread through wind driven rain, such as tropical storms, like the one we're having now, lawnmowers and even human movement. So we're not really sure if this came up from Florida, which would make sense. But the first trees that were found infected were in a landscape, and the trees had been purchased about a year prior and planted in the yarn, and it had already spread to other citrus trees in that direct vicinity. And when they traced it down to where the trees came from, the nursery that they bought the trees from actually had a lot of infected trees also. So they're thinking that it may have come in on the plant material. But since then, I think this was in June, but since then we've also found it in Mobile County. So it may have come in on plant material or it may have come up from Florida, but it seems to sort of be established right now. So the Department of Ag is going out and doing serving and they are destroying trees that are infected to try and limit the spread of this disease. And then we're eventually going to be put under a statewide quarantine for citrus canker, which means that you can't move material out of the state. The second interesting thing that we saw this year was crazy top downy mildew. And this occurs in corn. This is a fungus, and it's very similar to phytoptheras and pythiums, they're water molds, and they spread in the soil. So you usually find this in areas that are prone to flooding or low areas in the field. But it causes this excessive tillering and rolling and twisting of the leaves and the tassels proliferate so much that it resembles just this tight leafy structure. It doesn't really cause a lot of damage so far because it is isolated to those wet areas. But if we keep getting incredibly wet years, this can start building up in the soil, because it has overwintering structures to help it survive. And it could start becoming a problem. We identified bacterial canker, and for some reason we seem to have found a lot of this this year. So either I'm getting better at identifying this or else it's spreading around a lot easier. So this is a bacterial disease, obviously, based on the name. It's caused by clavibacter. It has a foliar phase, which you can see in this left picture where you get necrosis starting on the outside of the leaves moving inward. And then it very quickly just wilts the entire plant and it collapses. These are samples that Ed Sakura brought in. And if you cut the base of the plant open, you'll see it rotting in the very center of the base. But I think we probably saw about maybe 10, 15 bacterial canker samples this year. It can very quickly wipe out an entire field if it's spread around. This very unhappy tomato. This is another sample that Ed Sakura brought in. This thing had southern blight on it, which is, you can see these sclerotia here. But then when we cut it open and started doing testing, it tested positive for bacterial canker. It also tested positive for bacterial wilt. We were able to isolate fusarium out of this brown discoloration in the vascular system. And you could even see some gauze on the roots from nematodes. This plant had no chance of survival. By top there are blight on peppers is not something that we normally see either. I've seen it before, but only a handful of times. And it always seems to occur in North Alabama. But you get a wilted plant. And then you have this very pretty purple lesions on the stems. And it's very distinctive. And then if you look at the base of the plant, it looks like the base of it's just rotting. I think about half of the roots have already rotted off this plant. This is one of those soil-borne pathogens also considered a water mold. So it's spread around in the soil and it's going to be a problem when it rains excessively. This is pinklym blight. And you can guess why they call it that. It produces this fungal structure on all the limbs. And it's very bright salmon pink. That's why they call it corticum seminicular. This is on fig. But this does have a fairly wide host range in the tropics and the subtropics. I normally only see it on fig in Alabama. But we tend to see it pretty much every year. We've just seen an excess of it this year. It really concerns homeowners when they see this pink material growing all over their limbs. And then everything out from the infected area on just collapses and dies. There's not really a whole lot you can do about this. It's more of a problem when it's wet, but you just have to go in there and cut out all of the damaged tissue. In turf diseases, Rhizoctonia was our biggest problem this year. It was active all season long. It only occurs in the spring and in the fall when the temperatures are kind of cool and the environments wet. But we stayed a little bit cooler this year throughout the season. So we were seeing tons and tons of these samples. In fact, we saw a lot of Rhizoctonian diseases in general. I've got a couple more after this one. But you just get these round patches and you'll have a yellow halo around it. Sometimes the turf will start regrowing in the center of it. So if you get this disease, you need to avoid using fertilizers because they produce succulent roots, which the fungus really likes. And you need to avoid using herbicides because you're not supposed to use herbicides on diseased plants. It'll cause further damage. There are two different pest management books to look for fungicides for this. If you're a homeowner or a commercial company. And this pathogen is pretty much ubiquitous in the soil. It usually only affects when conditions are favorable or the plants under stress. So fungicides alone are not going to control the disease. If you don't correct the stress factors, then the disease is going to come right back. You'll have to continually keep spraying for it. Most of the common stress factors are nutrient deficiencies, inadequate pH or nematodes. So if you end up getting this disease, I would suggest that you also have a nutrient analysis done on the soil and a nematode analysis. So like I said, we had a lot of Rhizoctonian diseases this year. This was in sweet potatoes. This is down in Jacobs area. So it also causes a damping off. And that is when you get a pre-emergent damping off where your seeds rot before they come up or you get a post-emergent damping off. Where the seedlings become infected after they emerge and then they die off. This happens when you're planting in the cool wet soils. These kinds of conditions inhibit plant growth but enhance fungal growth. So plants become more resistant as they age. So anything you can do to get the plants to grow quickly is going to help protect against the stamping off diseases. We saw a lot of Rhizoctonia aerial blight this year also. This was in chrysanthemums. This is the initial stage of the disease. You can actually see the mycelium, why they call it aerial blight. In the foliage and all that foliage just gets trapped with that mycelium. It kind of like glues it together. So all the leaves stay attached in some sort of jumbled mess. It almost looks like caterpillar webbing. And we decided to keep this plant so that we could keep taking pictures of it as it advanced. And it will eventually just wipe out the entire top portion of the growth. In a nursery setting or greenhouse setting, if you start getting this disease, you really have to stay on a very strict fungicide schedule and never use potting media and make sure you're sanitizing everything correctly. In the way of hemp diseases, the two main things that we're seeing right now is fusarium, budrod and southern blight. These are pictures here on the left from Jessica Kelton. This grower had fusarium budrod last year and he started seeing some dying back of the foliage and the buds. So this is a sample that we got when it came in. You probably can't see it because the picture is so small, but you can see the fungus growing all over this material. It was a bad problem last year. Budrod was people, you know, grow the entire season. You have so much input into this crop. And then at the very end, when it's super wet like this, you just, you get budrod and you lose a lot. So this is usually associated with caterpillar feeding damage. The caterpillars get in there and feed and they open up wounds, which allows the fusarium to come in and infect. So what I would suggest to people, if you're having this problem and you're going to harvest, you need to harvest these infected buds out separately. Keep them away from anything that looks healthy because fusarium can actually cause mycotoxins, which are very harmful to human health. And if you are having the CBD processed, the processor is going to be testing for mycotoxins and they will reject the entire load if they find them. And then with southern blight, you can see this thick mycelium, usually growing at the base of the plant and the sclerosia that look like little mustard seeds, growing on top of it. Sometimes the fungus will grow out onto the soil around the plant, but it just girdles the plant, cuts off the water supply, and the plant wilts very quickly. So the last thing I wanted to say is that we have a new insect diagnostician. If any of you didn't know, name is Dr. Meredith Schrader. She's out here at the alpha building in room 139. Here's her email address and you can reach her at our lab number. She will eventually have a phone set up in her lab. The samples still come to the diagnostic lab. We'll make sure they get to the right place. And we are very happy to have her here.