 All right, well thank you and thank you all for joining me today. I, my responsibilities at Mississippi State cover vegetables, fruits as well as pecans and so I typically deal more so with vegetables than with some of the fruits, but blueberries are the largest fruit produced, the biggest produce production in Mississippi and so there are a lot of different resources out there for blueberry diseases and so with just 30 minutes I'm going to kind of hit on some topics that I thought might be a good review. And so I will review some of those topics and then also point you to some resources where you can get some additional information that sign just doesn't allow us to discuss today. So, talking about plant diseases, this is a definition that I like plant diseases any abnormality in a plant's growth development functioning value or appearance due to the activity of a pathogenic biotic agent. I like going over the definition of plant disease because there are lots of things that may be confused with plant diseases. And so, if you are thinking that you have a plant disease but you're and you're trying to manage plant diseases but the issue that you're dealing with is not actually a disease. And then you may be spending extra money extra time, trying to manage the wrong issue and so it's always important to know what exactly it is you're dealing with. So, we're going to talk about plant diseases today. How do you know that you have a disease, while there are symptoms and there are signs so your symptoms are the visit the plant's reaction to infection and blueberries some common symptoms include lesions and various plant tissues, you could have chlorotic or necrotic tissue. In some cases with some of the viruses like you see in the picture on the bottom right you may have brain spots these may often be red or dark purple and color with a green center, and then many of you are probably familiar with a number of the different fruit plots. In terms of signs, some diseases, you may see symptoms alone, some diseases you may see signs and symptoms, but the signs is the visible presence of a pathogen and so some of the common signs that you may see with blueberry diseases are various spungle mycelia that you may see for example with betritus or gray mold and blueberry as in the top right photo. Or you can see sometimes masses of spores like is common with anthracnose fruit right and where it produces a salmon colored mass of spores on those fruits that are infected. So those are indications that you may have disease that you may need to make sure that you are implementing a disease management program for those particular diseases. So here's something for you to think about. Can you identify blueberry diseases based on your experience and the information that I just gave you. So there are six photos up here. There are various symptoms. So if you look at that are those plant diseases, are they something else. I'm testing it here I see him taking Dr. Sakura taking a closer look. So, just thinking about what we discussed what I just brought up and looking at those. Here's the answer. Efficiency, mummy berry leaf rust powdery mildew cold damage and fire and damage. So, three of those are not actually plant diseases, but it's common sometimes to basically not everything that looks like a disease is a disease. But it's common to get some of those things mistaken for disease. I can say it's important to know what you're dealing with. So when we're thinking about disease, you need to be thinking preventively. And there are three conditions that are necessary for disease development. You have to have the virulent pathogen, you have to have a susceptible host and you have to have the favorable environmental conditions for that pathogen. In order for disease to develop. And so when we're thinking about disease management, you can kind of try and expect what diseases may occur and I'll talk about some of that with some specific diseases later. But if any one of those conditions is absent, as you saw with the exes that passed on in each of those three conditions, then disease will not develop. So when we're talking about disease management, we are trying to modify one of those components of the disease triangle, which was from illustrated in the previous slide. So that disease development does not occur. So the first step, as I already mentioned in disease management is diagnosis, you have to identify the cause of the symptoms. And then the specific management options that are effective against a particular pathogen and disease are going to depend on the pathogen that is causing that disease and what we know about its life cycle. So how that pathogen is spread, where it comes from, how it may overwinter, what parts of the plant can be affected or infected. And so disease management and the diagnosis is a process. So you may have to see, you may see an image or receive an image. You may see symptoms in the field, like you see it on the bottom left, but then you have to figure out what is causing those symptoms and then the photos images illustrated here show just different magnifications of what we as plant pathologists are trying to look for to make sure that we are getting the accurate diagnosis. So this was just an example of anthracnose and blueberry foliage. So just some things for you to think of when to help make you prepare to best manage diseases in your blueberry fields. You want to know your plant, you want to know the proper growth stages, you want to know what the various growth stages look like, what healthy flowers look like. You know that's your crop you want to be familiar with it. But you also need to know and be able to recognize the common diseases that may occur in your area. And this is true for insect damage as well. So attending presentations such as this, looking at various literature or university extension resources to be able to know, hey, these are symptoms that might indicate that I have a disease I need to look into this to make sure that you are properly prepared to manage diseases. You want to be observant and scout regularly for disease. Disease can spread or can develop quickly. And the pathogen can spread quickly. And so you want to make sure that you are on top of everything and trying to prevent as much damage as possible. This is a record of what you're doing, what fungicides you may be spraying, what cultural practices you're using, what pathogens or diseases you may have had in the past so that you know if something is soilborne, for example, you know, in the future years, that may be something that you see again. You want to find information about diseases. As I mentioned, there are a lot of available resources out there that are very useful. I'll discuss some of those next. And then knowing what information to collect and who to contact for help so that you can accurately describe the situation to your extension agents or specialists so that they can best help you to determine what are the disease management methods for the particular disease and your operations. So a few different resources that are out there and I believe most of these have already been posted in the chat box. Again, I'm with Mississippi State University Extension. I believe it was towards the end of 2020. We just updated a publication we have that is available online on establishment and maintenance of blueberries. We redid the disease section of this publication and so there's a lot of photos as well as some information about description of the symptoms and everything in that photo in that publication. And so that includes some of the diseases that I'll be discussing today, as well as some additional ones. The Southern Region Small Fruit Consortium is also an important resource www.smallfruits.org. The Small Fruit Consortium puts out a number of different IPM production guides, including one for conventional blueberry production as well as one for organic blueberry pest management. And so this is a really useful guide. This is what I use whenever I'm looking to find the best fungicide products for management of the various diseases. There's also a tab on the website for agent training. There are video presentations. I don't believe the blueberry one is posted yet, but they're the blueberry IPM presentation by University of Georgia. It's a longer video that goes more in depth into some of the diseases that I won't have time to cover today. The guide is very useful and it provides descriptions of diseases, the various management options as well as the rates, reentry intervals, should be pre-harvest intervals, and then additional comments. The guide is arranged by plant stage and so I won't give specific fungicide names today, but an example of one of the pages out of that guide is shown on the screen here. So this shows some example listings for mummy berry and ripe rot. And you can see the fungicides are listed in order of best efficacy going down towards. This is the representative by the e bg is very good, but it goes from excellent to fair when those products are available. And so I mentioned some of that with in terms of advocacy later on. And then another useful part of this guide is the seasonal at a glance fungicide or spray guide. And this just kind of gives you an idea of some of the fungicides that you may be using for the various diseases at the different stages of blueberry growth. Another really good resource is the my IPM app. This app is free for iPhone and Android devices, and it provides the information that you see here for a number of different diseases. It includes photos management guidelines, some of the diseases even have audio clips that you can listen to that are just very short like maybe two to three minutes, and then pesticide information in terms of the active ingredients that are labeled for those diseases as well. So several of the photos that I have in the presentation are from the my IPM app. So again, today, talked a little bit about disease and disease development, some things that you can do to be prepared. Some of the resources that you can consult for additional information. And then I'm going to talk about five different diseases and then give just some general disease management reminders, but the link in the chat box for the blueberry IPM presentation, there is a longer presentation on disease management by Dr. Johnston Oliver at University of Georgia, and he goes more in depth into various propagation and establishment issues, as well as root rot. Bacterial will is a bacterial disease that showed up in the last 10 years in Florida and now University of Georgia is also seeing some of these issues so that would be a really good disease to learn about and watch out for in Alabama. And then he discusses a couple of viruses more in depth. And then, again, some of the fungal leaf spots and fruit rods, and he does an excellent job of discussing a seasonal spray schedule for fungicide and just kind of looking at the season as a whole and when certain diseases are most prevalent during that timeline point at which various fungicides should be applied for disease management. So, I want to start out with exavocidium. This is maybe one of the first diseases that you see in the beginning of the year is caused by a fungus, and it can cause significant yield losses do not only to fruit drop, but to the loss of marketability. As you can see on the ripened blueberry fruit, you still have this greenish spot that is, it does not ripen and it stays discolored and so the presence of those blueberries in a clam shell may make that entire clam shell unmarketable. And so, symptoms of this disease are too commonly observed from mid March through June so there is still time to see and determine if you may have this disease present in your plantings. The symptoms start out as green unripe spots on the ripened fruit and you can see kind of the timeline from early symptom development through progressing through the advanced symptoms where the brown lesion and the photos of the far right may be mistaken for a number of other diseases. So commonly, this is an easy disease to identify if you see that fourth picture on the top row. That is commonly what I get questions about in photos sent to me asking what the problem is. So it can affect the leaves as well as the fruits. You can see the unripened fruit, you may start to see some of the lesion develop, but it is very prominent on the ripened fruit. And so, again, I want to talk about this one first because it is one of the first diseases that you may see, and there is still some time to see when this disease, if this disease is present in your field. So managing the plant canopy to increase air circulation can help reduce the development of this disease. But the probably most useful thing in management effects of the CDM fruit and leaf spot is going to be a single application of the appropriate fungicide that occur is applied during dormancy approximately one to two weeks prior to leaf and bud break. And then the result of that one application can be effective management throughout the rest of the season. Once you get past June and you're not having new infections. There are some fungicides that can be applied during the season. And fungicides also have, if they're applied for other diseases may have some efficacy against this disease, but you have to kind of watch not every product is labeled specifically with exosidium so that was one reason I didn't want to give particular fungicides not in a bean in Alabama knowing which specific fungicides are labeled I do know that Lyme sulfur ultra does have an exosidium label and that is one of the ones that can be applied prior to the growing season during dormancy I don't know if that product is registered in Alabama. But there is a list of products in the blueberry IPM guide. And so that is can be useful there but the key point here is that if this is a problem one year and you may have it next year the pathogen overwinters on the plant and so keep in mind that that single application prior to leaf and blood break is going to be most effective and will help you out the most. And finally again is a another important disease that many of you are probably familiar with. It is caused by a fungus symptoms in the spring may be observed as drooping leaves and shoots, followed by discoloration and death of the infected foliage. The infected tissues eventually fall from the plant, but you can see tan or gray tusks on shooted blights. I'm glad to choose, excuse me. And then when you at ripening the infected berries can turn cream to salmon pink as you see in this image. The berries begin to mummify and source and dry up so they're called mummies. So there will be infected berries will be soft at first but then when they shrivel and harden, they may eventually drop to the ground, and then you may see the planting floor may look very similar to what you see in the image. So again, this fungus overwinters in the mummified fruit on the ground, and it can survive for several years in the soil. The fungal spores can be disseminated by wind rain or insects. It's particularly important that if you have frost injury, due to late frost that again we've talked about environment, a favorable environment. There is a time that you need to be thinking that if you have that late frost or frost injury that occurs that those tissues may be more susceptible to infection by mummy berry and you would want to take action to try and protect your plants from becoming infected at that time. So in terms of management, practicing sanitation through cultivation and removal of those mummies on the orchard floor can help to remove some of that inoculum. You can bury those mummies by adding a one inch layer of mulch to cover those mummified fruits. Eventually what will happen from those mummified fruits can develop the small mushrooms that you see in the image on this slide. And so if you are applying that mulch to cover the fruits then what you're doing is essentially covering the preventing those mushrooms from growing up and then being able to spread spores that can infect plants. So pruning frost-injured canes can also be useful and harvesting equipment can, you can spread the pathogen from infected fields to non-infected fields. So if you have multiple fields and you know some of them are infected or have mummy berry in those fields, you want to clean the harvesters in between those fields and make sure that you're not trying to spread there. Spread the pathogen there. Again, fungicides are one of the useful tools for management of mummy berry. Those fungicides are going to need to be applied from green tip or first bloom, whichever comes first through bloom. And then there are various active ingredients that have either very good or good, or sorry, very good or excellent efficacy against mummy berry. Another disease that you may see again, this is kind of starting towards the beginning of the season is betridious blossom blight and it also causes a fruit rot. This is caused by fungus. Sometimes you may hear of it referred to as gray mole. So twigs can, or even initially brown and black, but then can become tan to gray. And you may have abundant gray mycelium and spores that develop on those blighted blossoms. You can't really see that in the images, but it is pretty unique for this disease. And then you can have fruit rots that occur after harvest if they if the fruits are infected. Typically this disease causes losses very early in the growing season. But and it can cause severe damage when you have rainy weather through bloom. So again, this fungus can overwinter in or on plant debris. This is the third disease now that you're seeing that the pathogen can overwinter either on the plants are in that plant debris. And again, this one, this pathogen, fungal pathogen, the spores can be produced in spring can be blown easily by wind and can move and spread to new plants. So for management of this disease, you want to use practices that promote air movement throughout the plant canopy. If you apply excess nitrogen fertilizer in the spring, that can actually help to increase the chance for disease development. So you want to avoid that excessive use of nitrogen at that time, you want to harvest fruit often and as it ripens, which is a key point for many fruit rots. And again, rapid post harvest cooling. Excuse me too, it's important to help inhibit the post harvest rot for the betrots fruit rot. And then there are fungicides that are also useful and effective against the development of blossom light and fruit rot. And those are listed in that IPM guide as well. So intracnose fruit rot is another one that can be important. This is another fungal disease. Intracnose can also cause leaf spots on the leaves, but I want to focus on the fruit rot, which is commonly called right rot. But as you can see on the slide, you have the blighting of blossoms. The fruit often remains without symptoms until you have maturity when the blossom and becomes soft and sunken on the berries. And then the most common sign that you can see with intracnose or right rot is the salmon colored masses of spores that may develop on those infected berries. Phungus is one that overwinters in and on blighted twigs. The spores are released during rains throughout the growing season. So we're seeing this common trend of fungal spores being blown easily by wind or being splashed through during rains. With this disease, all fruit at all stages is meaning all stages of the fruit is susceptible to infection. And again, thinking about those favorable environmental conditions, losses due to right rot are more severe during prolonged periods of warm wet weather during bloom and before harvest. So I know I was talking to some colleagues earlier, we were talking about the weather conditions were having lots of rains. Rain is important for the spread of many fungal diseases are for infection of many of plants by many different fungal pathogens. And so you can kind of keep in your mind that these are things that when those rain, those weather conditions occur, you may likely have periods where disease development is more common. So for anthracnose fruit rot, you want to use appropriate cultivars, susceptibility does vary among cultivars and species. Again, as with the to try and prevent the fruit rot, you want to harvest fruit often and as it ripens that post harvest cooling is important. And then fungicides are another useful tool for this disease as well does fun decide to be applied from bloom through the cover sprays. And there are numerous active ingredients that are available that range in advocacy from fair to excellent. So one other the last disease that I wanted to mention. This is a fairly scarred. This is caused by a bacterium xylolofesidiosa. This disease was first reported in 2004. So again, this is still a fairly new disease. That research is still being on which research is still being conducted to try and answer some of the questions that we have about it. This disease is more problematic in southern high bush blueberries. The spectrum is transmitted by insects that feed and the xylem or the water conducting tissues of the plant. And the symptoms of this disease that you can see here, particularly in the photos on the far left. You have a marginal scorching that progresses towards necrosis where the tips of the leaves often turn brown and then start progressing toward the inside of that leaf. And then another kind of unique symptom of this disease is that the yellowing of the stems that you can see in the photo on the right when those leaves drop. That makes it more easily. These yellow stems more easily visible, but then it progresses from those scorching symptoms that may be confused as symptoms of drought. And then you can see the plants without the leaves and those yellow stems and eventually the plants will die if they are infected. So for management, you don't want to take cuttings from disease plants. You want to use resistant or tolerant cultivars if there are any that are available for your area. The plants will die. So if you over time, so if you leave them in your planting, then they may just serve as a source of inoculum and the pathogen may continue to spread so you want to remove and destroy infected plants. And then vector management of the sharpshooters, this island feeding insects that transmit this disease, this pathogen may be useful at reducing disease spread. This has been more widely studied in some other crops such as grapes. So we don't, it's still a factor that is unknown, but it is something that may be effective, but we just don't have the current research to say for sure how effective it may be at reducing spread. So, again, that was just a quick reminder. I want to review a few different diseases. The bacterial leascores, there are no chemical management options for that disease. Some of the other ones there are chemical management options, and those fungicides are very useful at managing those diseases. As with any disease management program, you want to use an integrated disease management program. You don't want to rely solely on fungicides, even though they may be very important to achieving sufficient management of any particular disease, you want to make sure that you're using cultural practices, as well as those chemical management options, because those cultural management practices may help to reduce the amount of fungicides that you may be needing to put out there. When using fungicide, you want to make sure that you are using them properly, follow the label directions as the label is the law, but this is not a purchase one fungicide and then apply it throughout the season. You want to make sure that you have fungicide, seasonal fungicide spray program that involves rotation of fungicides by the different chemistries. So fungicide rotation is important because you want to make sure that those tools, the fungicide remain effective for long periods of time. If you continually use the same fungicide over and over, that increases the likelihood that pathogens may develop resistance to that fungicide and you will lose a tool that may be useful. Another important thing to remember is that fungicide coverage is important. That may often be overlooked, but as your plants grow and size, you may need to increase the amount of water that you are using to apply the spray to your planting so that you're getting the sufficient coverage for protection of your plants. Again, I mentioned a couple of times about harvesting to prevent the fruit rots, probably harvesting and handling fruit is important. There are some fungicides that can be used to help reduce fruit rots, but that should certainly be used along with harvesting practices to harvest fruit when they arrive and completely harvest the right fruit from the plants. You want to ensure the rapid post harvest cooling and you don't want to handle fruit when wet as that can make those fruits more susceptible to development of the rots. After all of that, you want to not forget about disease management after harvest. You may have the crop, but that doesn't mean that after the crop comes off the plant that you can't still get various fungal diseases or diseases that attack the stems of those plants. So you still want to make sure that you're scouting for disease and implementing disease management for any other disease issues that occur. And then you want to continue your education, continue to talk to your extension specialists and agents, continue to attend events like this, and to look for, to get the latest extension publications and IPM guides. I mentioned bacterial wilt and xylella. Those are new diseases that have come up in the last 20 years or with bacterial wilt. That was something that's only been around for, I think, six or seven years, but they, it has spread and been observed in Georgia. So, new things develop new management practices or better management practices may be tested and found to be effective or some of the management practices that have been around for a long period of time may not be as effective. So, continuing your education to make sure that you're up to date with any changes so that you know what to expect and what to be on the lookout for can be very useful as well. So that was a quick overview of some things just tips and reminders to pay attention to during the season. Some of the diseases that you can look for right now to make sure that you're still protecting against those diseases or planning for the future. And my contact information is there as well as the links to various publications in the chat box.