Read more about the article Dissecting the cause of reoccurring blueberry shock disease

Dissecting the cause of reoccurring blueberry shock disease

In recent years, there has been an emergence of shock-like disease in previously BlShV-affected fields. The recurring disease has been observed for several years in Oregon and Washington, with disease incidence exceeding 50% in some cases. Over the last decade, the use of High Throughput Sequencing (HTS) has become more widely used for plant virus detection primarily because of two important attributes lacking in current technologies: 1. The ability to provide information on virus population structure, including virus variants, of a plant in a single test; and 2. detect viruses and viroids that have no known laboratory test, also called novel viruses (Villamor et al., 2019).

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Read more about the article Detection of wine faults using the electronic tongue

Detection of wine faults using the electronic tongue

Faulted wines pose a serious economic problem to the wine industry, these off flavors can cause consumers, new to a region or variety, to reject that region entirely. Wine faults can include off-aromas or flavors associated with chemical compounds produced by spoilage organisms Brettanomyces, Acetobacter, Pediococcus or Lactobacillus. From the producers and winemakers’ perspective, early detection of wine faults would allow for remediation before the fault becomes more serious, intractable, and costly. Research in wine fault detection continues to develop as more sensitive and rapid analytical methods are identified that can reflect the complexity of the faulted wine.

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Read more about the article Biology and Management of Cutworms in Washington Vineyards

Biology and Management of Cutworms in Washington Vineyards

Cutworms are capable of causing severe damage in vineyards during the early spring months when vines buds and tender shoots are at their most vulnerable. Damage to buds can cause severe crop loss in Washington vineyards, and this study supports the idea that the Cutworm species found on vineyard floors (on weeds, etc.) are a minor component of the fauna that actually damages grapevines. Vineyard sites with a large number of Cutworms on the vineyard floor did not necessarily sustain major bud damage. Conversely, sites with small numbers of Cutworms sometimes sustained major bud damage. This appeared to be related to ground cover presence/absence and/or type, but was also, in view of the rearing data, a consequence of most ground-dwelling species preferring to remain on the ground and not climb up grapevines.

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Read more about the article Identification of the fungal pathogen causing dry-berry and development of tools for rapid identification

Identification of the fungal pathogen causing dry-berry and development of tools for rapid identification

Dry-berry, a disease of raspberry and blackberry, whereby immature green berries are killed, was first described in British Columbia, Canada in the 1950’s. The pathogen was named Rhizoctonia rubi, and we have made significant progress in reexamining the identity of the pathogen with molecular methods and determining its fungicide sensitivity. We characterized DNA sequences of 14 dry-berry fungal isolates and determined that the fungal pathogen causing dry-berry disease is a novel species of Monilinia, not a Rhizoctonia species as previously thought. This has major implications on the types of fungicides that will best manage the disease. Using these DNA sequences, we are now developing PCR-based tools to rapidly confirm dry-berry disease in less than a day.

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