Leaf Roll Disease

Leaf Roll Disease

Leaf Roll Disease. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Naidu Rayapati is a research scientist for WSU’s Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center who has been working on a bit of a mystery. Leaf roll disease. And it’s not an easy one.

RAYAPATI: Grape wine leaf roll disease is indeed one of the most complex virus diseases known to infect plants. The second complexity is that red grape varieties express symptoms more clearly whereas white grape varieties don’t express visual symptoms even though both are infected with the same disease.

And Rayapati says there are no chemicals to halt the disease.

RAYAPATI: This disease is at least 9 different viruses have been found associated with leaf roll disease. And the expression of leaf roll disease symptoms many times vary even within the red grape varieties depending on the cultivar, depending on the virus.

So leaf roll disease is difficult to detect, impossible to control and causes a degraded product so wine quality is poor. Rayapati suggest getting new stock from good sources.

RAYAPATI: What we are trying to do is two approaches. One is to understand this disease better by using different techniques and technologies and then disseminate this science based information to growers .

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

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