Feb 21, 2012
Berry blues: Fungus hits blueberry growers

What Bill and Anita Cook should have been doing once the weather cleared last Wednesday was pruning their 60-year-old Atlantic, Jersey, Dixie and Stanley blueberry bushes — snipping away at older, weaker limbs crowding out the stronger ones as they prepare to bear fruit this summer.

Instead, the Cooks’ eyes are fixed on the muddy ground beneath the bushes on their one-acre farm in west Eugene. They were preoccupied with a painstaking task: picking up "mummy berries," one by one, and pocketing them.

This job has become as necessary as pruning because of the growing threat that the mummy berry fungus, Monilinia vaccinii-corymbosi, poses to Northwest blueberry farmers. The Wausau Daily Herald

Read more of the story here.




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