Alternaria was widespread in the East this year. Unrelenting rain after mid-August created conditions in the Northeast that were conducive to this normally secondary disease. More important, the strain going around was not controlled by the most commonly used fungicide.

 

Christy Hoepting conducted a fungicide trial to test both our current fungicide program and new materials. Azoxystrobin (Quadris) is widely used, and a 2014 survey in New York showed no resistance. (Cornell pathologists Meg McGrath and Chris Smart are checking for known and novel resistance in 2018 isolates.)

This year, Tim Coolong reported in August that a Quadris-resistant strain was showing up in Georgia. Christy’s trial showed Quadris failing to control in New York. The good news is that the Alternaria was susceptible to fluxapyroxad and pyraclostrobin, the active ingredients in Priaxor. Priaxor is already labeled for use in New York, except Long Island.

The hot and humid weather with heavy rainfall from remnants of hurricanes during August was the perfect storm for Alternaria leaf spot (ALS) to rage out of control in brassica crops across Western New York in 2018. Cornell Vegetable Program fresh market specialists received several complaints about a disease that caused unsightly lesions on both leaves and marketable portions of brassica plants. When ALS attacks the head of broccoli or cauliflower, it renders them unmarketable. Hoepting visited with a grower who was planning to cut broccoli production by one-third, because he had just lost over 85% of his most-recent 5-acre planting to ALS head rot, a loss of $7,500. She immediately set up an ad hoc small-plot replicated trial on his farm in hopes of finding a fungicide that could control this devastating disease.

By the time the broccoli was ready to harvest, differences among treatments in side-by-side plots were striking. In the untreated check, 98% of the heads were unmarketable due to severe ALS, while the best fungicide in the trial, Merivon (fluxapyroxad and pyraclostrobin) had only 5% unmarketable heads.  The fungicides that the grower had been using, Bravo and Quadris (azoxystrobin), resulted in 98% and 49% unmarketable heads, respectively. Commercially available fungicides Switch, Quadris Top and Endura had significantly lower unmarketable heads than Quadris with only 10 to 33%.

Priaxor can be applied at most 2 times sequentially and 3 times total. The only targeted fungicide that can be used with it in a program is Switch (cyprodinil and fludioxonil) because its active ingredients are in different chemical groups (FRAC groups 9 and 12) from those of Priaxor (7 and 11).

If the grower were to adopt a 4-week fungicide program with top-performing fungicides, he could expect to get at least 75% marketable heads. Compared to his Bravo/Quadris program, which only yielded 1470 pounds and net $1,323 per acre, the new program could increase both yield and net profit 5-fold by 5881 pounds and $5,562 per acre, despite a 5-fold increase in cost of fungicides from $44 to $223 per acre. After viewing the fungicide trial on his farm, the grower immediately adjusted his fungicide program to include the most effective fungicides in all of his remaining brassica plantings. He is planning to resume full broccoli production next year with the new fungicide program, which has potential to increase profit by $166,860 in his 30 acres of broccoli. Trial results will be shared with CVP growers over the winter, so all conventional growers can benefit from improved ALS control in their brassicas.

 

For a 2014 survey showing all 47 isolates being susceptible to Quadris, see Kreis, Dillard and Smart. Plant Disease. http://dx.doi.org/10.1094/PDIS-03-16-0414-RE

 

Note added January 11: Today at the Southeast Vegetable Conference, Dr. Bhabesh Dutta of the University of Georgia at Tifton showed that the pathogen present in Georgia this year is a different (new) species of fungus that it is not controlled by azoxystrobin. Pathologists around the East are testing isolates from their regions to determine whether this species is the one that cause unusually high losses in the region.

This result is useful in that Dr. Dutta has already identified a fungicide program that should be effective in 2019. If the other azoxystrobin-resistant isolates turn out to be the new species, it mean that there has not been a change in the usual Alternaria.