Interesting farm call here that at first piqued my attention as a possibly serious disease situation but in the end turned out to not be. See the photos below. Affected strawberry plants presented with discolored leaves and stunted growth typical of nutrient deficiency or viral infection.
Waaaay too early to be seeing Fusarium infecting strawberry plants, but here it is. I was contacted two weeks ago by the grower who was seeing some plant collapse in his field (Photo 1) and had him submit samples and then went out personally to check it out.
Doing some more weekend reading in "Machine Platform Crowd" the popular and well quoted tract on what we are looking at this second phase of the machine age.
An interesting piece of local journalism this morning by Katrina Hunter, who has worked in agriculture on the Central Coast for a number of years. I remember speaking with her on some background for this article. No disputing Lygus bugs in strawberries are a pretty major deal.
The recent strawberry industry earthquake around the Japanese Olympic curling team declaring (on camera no less) that the strawberries served by their South Korean hosts as a snack during the games were "surprisingly delicious" should sound pretty familiar to any California strawberry industry insid...