Strawberry harvest is coming to an end in most states. A couple of diseases were found. In addition to botrytis fruit rot and common leaf spot that farmers are familiar with, anthracnose was found caused severe damage in plasticulture production in southern Indiana. Part of the reason is the high temperature followed by frequent rainfalls in the middle of May that overlapped with the harvest period of plasticulture strawberries. The article Managing Anthracnose in Strawberry provides information about the disease and the pathogen. For the third year, we found Neopestalotiopsis in our plasticulture variety trial at Southwest Purdue Ag Center. Plant & Pest Diagnostic Lab also identified the disease from commercial samples. More information about this disease can be found in the article New Strawberry Disease. As farmers are gaining interest in using plasticulture and plug plants, diseases that may not have had a significant concern may become more important in strawberry production in the region. Regarding insect pests, thrips and sap beetles caused damage at one of the strawberry farms I visited.
This project is supported by North Central Region Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program under project number LNC21-454.