Nov 19, 2024

Fresh Views: A Team approach to plant disease management

Have you ever run into a plant disease issue that left you stumped? Who did you turn to for advice or information on how to manage this disease? 

Luckily, when it comes to managing plant diseases, you are not alone and can leverage the experience and expertise of others to approach disease issues. Building a team can help you tackle disease pressures in various ways.

Growers can utilize a collaborative group approach to disease management to help spread responsibilities and lessen the load. This team can be composed of diverse members, each providing different benefits.

Preparing your team

Your production team is the first line of defense against diseases. Making sure they are prepared to identify and manage disease outbreaks is essential. Growers often ask for resources to help their production team better understand plant disease identification and their management. A good starting place for these resources are Extension websites, or reaching out to your local Extension educator or plant pathologist. 

Plant disease compendia, disease or pest management guides and production guides are valuable tools to add to your operation’s library. Digital copies of disease identification guides are invaluable to have on smartphones and allow for in-field scouting and disease identification. The more eyes able to scout while out and about in your operation, the better! 

Does everyone on your team know what the shepherd’s crook of fire blight looks like, or the distinctive, colorful twist of peach leaf curl? If not, informal teaching sessions, informational handouts or posters on key diseases can teach workers to detect diseases sooner. Once diseases are identified, team members need to know who needs to be notified to take action against the disease.

Training on the basic principles of plant disease management can go a long way in reducing disease spread. Remember, proper cultural practices are the foundation of plant health. Sanitation, pesticide safety and scouting are also crucial. 

Sanitation is incredibly important in reducing pathogen introduction and spread — it is also everyone’s responsibility in crop production. Tools and equipment need to be properly cleaned and sanitized between plants and tasks. By applying these management tactics, the team can help achieve the best levels of disease control.

Reach out to peers

Every grower has a unique approach to crop management and may offer solutions or suggestions to help resolve your disease issues. Are your peers using smart sprayers, spore trapping or disease forecasting, that might help your operation? Find out the answers, as experiences can be useful as you adopt new technologies.

Collaborating with other growers and testing new management tactics as a group can provide a better understanding of the efficacy of specific mitigation or control efforts. Take advantage of field days, regional growers’ groups and conferences to network with other growers and learn about a variety of disease management experiences and approaches.

Plant pathogens do not recognize borders, so neighboring growers are likely dealing with similar disease pressures as your operation. For pathogens spread by wind or insects, disease pressure can spill over into other operations if not kept in check. Coordinating management strategies with neighboring growers can help reduce overall disease pressure.

Tap expert resources

Team up with plant disease experts — tapping into others’ expertise is essential when dealing with disease issues. Crop consultants, company representatives, Extension plant pathologists, Extension educators, government researchers and plant disease diagnosticians are all available resources. Starting conversations with university, industry or government plant pathologists can provide you with initial solutions to pressing disease issues.

Conversations with researchers can also lead to future research projects, and grower collaborators are essential for providing future solutions to plant disease problems. Research grants, including grower-led grants, are available to growers through the Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program (sare.org) and other regional programs.

Larger, multi-regional collaborative projects need grower collaborators for on-farm research as well. An example of a multi-regional project to benefit fruit growers was the FRAME Network project (framenetworks.wsu.edu) that sought to improve pathogen monitoring and combat fungicide resistance in grape production.

Remember you are not alone when facing plant diseases, and a collective effort in disease management efforts will help with management decisions.

Writen by Anna Testen

Anna Testen is a research plant pathologist with USDA-ARS in Wooster, Ohio, focused on developing disease management strategies for CEA specialty crops. She has worked on vegetable, fruit and ornamental disease management projects in the United States, Ecuador, Bolivia, Tanzania and Ethiopia. For questions, please contact the author at [email protected].