BY JANE BLOODWORTH ROWE
VIRGINIA BEACH — A fungus that’s threatening strawberry plants in the Southeast may present challenges for Virginia Beach farmers who will soon plant for next spring’s harvest of the popular crop.
Local strawberry farmers typically set out young plants, which they buy from nurseries, in late September or early October. This year, however, some plants have become infected with Neopestalotiopsis, or Neo-P, a fungus that attacks the plant’s leaves and crowns and eventually can reach the root and kill the plant.
Avoiding disease has become a concern for commercial strawberry producers as the fungus spread into strawberry plants, said Virginia Beach Extension Agent Roy Flanagan. It has already caused problems in North Carolina, where researchers have warned about issues involving plants prepared and supplied for use by growers in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
Flanagan, himself a strawberry farmer, is unsure what the impact will be here.
“It may be nothing,” he told The Independent News, “or it may be a whole lot.”
Strawberries are a major cash crop for Virginia Beach farmers that is worth about $1.2 million annually, according to Flanagan. [Ed. — Flanagan is kin to John Doucette, editor of The Independent News.]
Most of the strawberry plants grown by Virginia Beach farmers get their start in Canada, where growers propagate young plants from mature plants. These mature plants, or “mother plants” put out runners, or stems that become rooted and form young plants, or “daughter” plants, Flanagan said.
Daughters are then shipped to the nurseries that supply local farmers. Impacts associated with the fungus damaged strawberry fields in Florida in 2019 and 2020, and, this year, concerns about the it have surfaced in other states, including North Carolina and Virginia. There have been warnings about issues with the nurseries that supply many farms and, in some cases, have canceled orders for plants.
Though farmers in some areas have had problems getting plants for the fall, Flanagan said, “I believe that all Virginia Beach growers who want plants have plants coming as of now.”
Still, he added, “If you get them, you don’t know that what you’re getting will survive and produce a crop” because symptoms can appear after young plants arrive. There is no cure for the fungus, and infected plants must be destroyed to keep it from spreading.
Fungicides can be used to reduce the risks of healthy plants developing the fungus, but, at best, this will result in increased costs, according to Robert Vaughan of Vaughan Farms’ Produce in southern Virginia Beach.
Concern about the fungus has already caused him some planting delays, he said. Vaughan ordered this year’s plants in the late spring, but his shipment will be delayed because the fungus forced nurseries to destroy so many of their first plants. He expects to be a couple of weeks late planting.
“There’s one nursery in Virginia that had to throw away the first 500,000 plants,” Vaughan said.
Neopestalotiopsis is spread primarily through rainfall, so a wet fall could increase the risks. Excessive rainfall would also force the farmer to spray more often because the fungicides wash away in rain, and that also would mean additional costs.
An extremely mild winter could also increase the risk because the plants may not become fully dormant, which increases the possibility that they could become infected even in mid-winter.
Strawberries are the spring’s first cash crop, so not growing them isn’t an option for Vaughan.
“The only question is, ‘What do we have to do to stay ahead of it?’” he said.
The fungus seems to have attacked Sweet Charlies, the earliest berries, particularly hard, Vaughan said. Fortunately, he saved last year’s crop and hopes that they will continue to be productive this year.
Strawberry growers Dion and Sharon Mosley of Creekmore’s Place, who grow berries on their Indian River Road farm, said that their crop is safe because they buy from a breeder who propagates plants by rooting the stems rather than by allowing plugs to develop from the runners.
“He’s basically producing clones, so we’ll bypass the disease,” Sharon Mosley said.
Meanwhile, Cindy Weatherly, owner of Cindy’s Produce, said that she won’t be planting strawberries this fall because she’s worried about contamination.
Once the fungus is in the soil, it could remain well beyond this season, Weatherly said.
“And until someone gets a better idea of what this is,” Weatherly said, “I don’t want to introduce something to my soil.”
Vaughan is cautiously optimistic the fungus can be managed. He expects consumers might see slightly higher prices next spring, but he doesn’t expect a major disruption in supplies. He points to a disease that affected strawberries several years ago resulting in smaller plants.
“The plants were a little stunted, but still we had a crop,” he said.
“With strawberries there’s always something,” said Flanagan, who added that, for growers, the learning process never stops.
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