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The MSU Extension apple team would like to know how useful this educational resource has been to you or your business. Please take a few minutes to provide feedback to improve the quality of this effort. Take the survey online by clicking here.

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Your crops are vulnerable! Hail, wind, drought, flood and more can threaten your crops and your livelihood. Learn how crop insurance and other programs provide protection for crop loss. This workshop is free for growers.

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This is the final set of articles for the 2009 season of the Fruit CAT Alert newsletter. Here for an index of articles on topics covered this year. Educators and specialists have worked hard to inform readers about current issues and crop production throughout the last few months.

We will continue to publish timely articles to the Fruit CAT Alert web site. Not signed up for our email notification? Send an email to catalert@msu.edu with your full name and note that you wish to subscribe to the landscape edition. You can also sign up to received RSS feeds when new articles are posted. Look for the bright orange RSS feed logo on the right side of this page.

We love to hear feedback from our readers. Do you have a comment or suggestion? Please send it to catalert@msu.edu. Indicate whether you are referring to our fruit, vegetable, field crop or landscape edition.

Thank you. - Joy Landis, editor and Andrea Buchholz, asst. editor

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George Sundin and Amy Irish-Brown...Orchards with existing apple scab infections on leaves will carry over significant inoculum into next season. In addition, much of this inoculum will likely be resistant to strobilurin fungicides. Thus, any methods that would be useful in reducing this inoculum load are important to  consider.

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George Sundin...In this article, I will review what we’ve observed and learned in 2009 and try to explain mechanistically the cause of disease issues we’ve faced this year. Before that, I want to acknowledge the excellent MSU Extension folks in the state (Mira Danilovic, Amy Irish-Brown, Erin Lizotte, Mark Longstroth, Nikki Rothwell, Phil Schwallier, Bill Shane, Bob Tritten) that work long and hard to stay on top of things in the tree fruit world. I am indebted to these dedicated professionals, rely on them for information, and enjoy the many “fruitful” discussions we have.

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Rufus Isaacs...Harvest of grapes and fall raspberries is underway, and it's time to be thinking about multicolored Asian lady beetles (MALB). The multicolored Asian lady beetles has become a pest of fall-harvested fruit crops because it seeks the sugary juice and tight spaces found in ripe berries, causing contamination of ripe fruit. If crushed, the beetles can release defensive secretions, tainting juice and wine.

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Annemiek Schilder and Timothy Miles...Conditions for mummyberry were favorable during the spring of 2009 with generally more disease pressure than in 2008. This was due to frequent rains and cool weather in spring and higher numbers of overwintering mummies from the previous season. In addition, overly wet fields and frequent rains prevented many growers from applying protective fungicides at critical times. Shoot strikes in four scouted fields were first noticed in mid-May and increased rapidly towards the end of May and into early June, followed by a decrease as old shoot strikes dried up and fell off the bushes. Conditions during bloom were moderate for dissemination of spores to the flowers as cool conditions reduced honey bee activity.

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Carlos García-Salazar...Since the discovery of the blueberry shock and scorch viruses around West Michigan, there has been a large volume of articles and information coming out of both MSU and the Michigan Department of Agriculture (MDA). This information has attracted national and international attention and has been disseminated all over the world. Communication between growers, scientists and regulatory agencies has been very effective in informing the Michigan blueberry industry and stakeholders about the danger that implies the spread of these viruses across the production area.

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Satoru Miyazaki, John Wise, and Bernard Zandstra...Due to the current review of crop protection chemicals under the Food Quality Protection Act and the high cost to industry of product registration, specialty crops (formerly known as minor crops) and sometimes, minor uses on major crops are at risk of having few available pest management products or being lost for pest management. To mitigate this problem IR-4 (Interregional Research Project No.4), primarily funded by USDA-CSREES, facilitates pesticide registration for specialty crops by conducting field residue trials, and occasionally, efficacy trials.

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Mark Longstroth, Bill Shane and Diane Brown-Rytlewski...The 2009 growing season will be long remembered by fruit growers for various reasons. There was some winter damage due to several radiation freezes in mid-January (-10 to -24°F). These freezes affected lower portions of orchards and vineyards and blueberries located away from Lake Michigan in good blueberry sites, located in lower topographic conditions. Initially, it was feared that wine grapes and peaches would be severely affected.

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Bob Tritten...Our season is still running a full two weeks behind normal in terms of degree day totals. However, our harvest dates for our fruit crops have been and continue to be close to being “right on schedule” compared to normal seasons.

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Amy Irish Brown, Phil Schwallier, Carlos Garcia-Salazar...As far as degree days go, 2009 started out on a rollercoaster, going from normal to above normal totals, back to normal and then very much behind normal averages for the Grand Rapids area. Here toward the end of the growing season, we are about nine days behind normal averages for GDD Base 42 and over 16 days behind average for GDD Base 50.

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Nikki Rothwell, Duke Elsner, Erin Lizotte and Rob Sirrine...Like all other regions in the state, northwest growers endured an unseasonably cool summer. The overall degree day totals as of September 21 are as follows: 3,143 base 42 and 1,947 base 50. Both of these accumulations are behind our 19-year averages where we accumulated 3,471 base 42 and 2,266 base 50. In essence, we are 328 GDD behind for our accumulations base 42 and 320 GDD behind for our accumulations base 50.

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Jeff Andresen...On Monday, September 21, showers and thunderstorms associated with the weather disturbance that brought extended heavy rain and flooding to much of the south and Ohio Valley during the past week ended an extended period of mostly sunny, dry weather across Michigan. Many areas had been dry since August 30. Forecast guidance is now suggesting some major upper air changes during the upcoming week leading to a cooler, more unsettled weather pattern.

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