Hurricanes Can Bring Crop Diseases, but Plant Clinics Help Farmers Quickly and Accurately Battle Pathogens Spread by Storms

By Brad Buck

Last fall, strawberry fields in the Tampa Bay region and at the UF/IFAS Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC) were riddled by colletotrichum crown rot disease, which was spread by winds and rain from Hurricane Milton.

The Category 3 storm – with winds of up to 120 mph and torrential rain — struck Oct. 9, right about when scientists and growers were starting to plant strawberries. But because of the plant diagnostic clinic at GCREC, growers received rapid, precise diagnoses of the disease and acted quickly to control it.

Now, as another hurricane season nears, farmers know the storms can bring diseases to all sorts of crops, which serve as the sources for much of the food we eat. The good news for growers is they can find out what’s ailing their crop from any UF/IFAS plant diagnostic clinic around Florida.

Labs are at the North Florida Research and Education Center in Quincy, the UF main campus in Gainesville, the Mid-Florida Research and Education Center in Apopka, the Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC) in Balm, the Southwest Florida Research and Education Center in Immokalee and the Tropical Research and Education Center in Homestead.

Just like with people and animals, diagnosing plant and crop diseases quickly and accurately is the key to finding ways to keep them under control.

It used to take up to a week to diagnose most of these diseases in a petri dish. Now, particularly with strawberries, scientists use plant DNA to specify diseases within 24 to 48 hours.

“When growers had to wait five to seven days for a traditional diagnosis, they would go ahead and treat it anyway,” said Natalia Peres, a plant pathology professor at GCREC. “They would use their best guess. That’s because you don’t want to watch your crop collapse.”

A few years ago, scientists at GCREC developed protocols to make faster diagnoses. Still, they did not have the equipment to perform the test. They asked the Florida Strawberry Growers Association (FSGA) for the technology, and FSGA came through, Peres said.