Plant health diagnosis for strawberry
Case 1 Plants wilting with red-streaked crowns - 1
Use Advanced for doses, plans and diagnosis Tap the level next to the microphone. Core gives quick answers and weather checks. Advanced reasons more deeply for spray programs, disease diagnosis and fertilization plans, and can take a minute or two. Auto lets ORTH choose. Every answer in this course used Advanced. For strawberry A wilt can come from the crown, the roots or the water. Keep Advanced on and say what you see on the leaves and inside the crown, and where in the plot. - 2
Describe the plant, inside and out We described plants that wilt at midday and do not recover well overnight, older leaves turning red and reddish-brown streaks in the cut crown. ORTH put Fusarium wilt first, but said crown colour alone does not prove it. It named Phytophthora crown rot, Verticillium wilt, charcoal rot and plain root failure from blocked emitters, high EC or crowns planted too deep as alternatives. After a dry week with outdoor highs of 22 to 28 °C, and a warmer tunnel, it called Fusarium, charcoal rot and water stress plausible. - 3
Check before you treat ORTH gave five checks. Map where the affected plants are: tray, row, emitter section or low spot. Dig plants up instead of pulling them, and compare washed roots with a healthy neighbour. Re-cut crowns with a clean blade: streaks or a ring point to Fusarium or Verticillium, a cinnamon decay with a sharp edge to Phytophthora, dry dark tissue with black specks to charcoal rot. Measure moisture and EC at the same plants. Then send early-symptom plants and a healthy one to a lab. - 4
What is safe to do now Mark and isolate the area, disinfect tools between plants, keep soil and drain water from that spot away from the rest, and bag collapsed plants. ORTH said to apply no fungicide or root drench yet: these diseases need different treatments, and a vascular infection is not cured by spraying. The next evidence ORTH asked for is a photo of a cut crown and washed roots next to a healthy plant. Case 2 If the lab confirms Fusarium - 5
Contain it this season ORTH treated a confirmed Fusarium as a problem to contain. Infected crowns cannot be cured, and the whole crop does not have to go by default. Turn the scheduled disease check into a map by bed, row, irrigation sector and transplant lot. Remove collapsed plants with crown and roots, work clean areas first, keep irrigation even without extra water for wilting plants, and trace the nursery lot. If new cases stay scattered, keep the healthy crop going; if they form patches, judge those beds separately. - 6
Next season in the same soil ORTH would not plant a susceptible variety back into the same untreated soil, because Fusarium persists in the soil and in root debris and a short rotation does not clear it. Lower-risk paths: clean substrate bags kept apart from the soil, a non-host crop, which lowers the inoculum without eradicating it, or a return to soil combined with residue removal, certified clean transplants, a cultivar with documented resistance, a locally proven soil disinfestation such as solarisation, and a small test plot first. - 7
Ask about varieties Varieties differ a lot in susceptibility, and with a confirmed case ORTH called Fortuna a high-risk choice for that soil. Look for tested resistance to Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. fragariae instead of vague claims, and remember that resistance is not immunity. ORTH would not assume San Andreas is safer just because it is day-neutral. Ask each nursery for trial evidence, the isolate used and results under Huelva tunnels.
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