Verticillium wilt, caused by Verticillium dahliae, is a major disease affecting California strawberry production. Following the phase out of methyl bromide, an integrated approach is necessary to alleviate disease pressure. Two field experiments were conducted to evaluate the integration of sequential fumigant applications, crop termination and bed fumigation, and a moderately resistant cultivar on disease incidence and yields. Crop termination utilized metam potassium or metam sodium; bed fumigation utilized either of the metam products or chloropicrin. ‘Seascape’ and ‘Valiant’ were utilized to evaluate the integration of genetic resistance following fumigation. In both trials, total and marketable yields were statistically similar between plots that were only bed fumigated and those sequentially crop terminated and bed fumigated. In trial 1, where initial V. dahliae inoculum and disease pressure were high, sequential crop termination with metam potassium followed by bed fumigation with chloropicrin produced the highest average total (21.8 ± 0.7 kg) and marketable (16.4 ± 0.7 kg) yields and significantly reduced disease incidence compared with the non-treated control. In contrast, trial 2 exhibited lower overall disease incidence due to reduced inoculum levels and cooler, wetter conditions; no significant yield differences were observed among treatments. Across both trials, ‘Seascape’ produced higher average total yields than ‘Valiant’, and cultivar resistance did not consistently reduce disease incidence. These results indicate that fumigation remains most effective under high inoculum conditions, whereas the benefit of additional crop termination or genetic resistance is diminished under low disease pressure.
Koster et al. (Sun,) studied this question.
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