Making Sure Plants Are Clean

When you are looking at replanting some of your trees or vines the last thing you want to worry about is some kind of disease in your rootstock. Kevin Judkins with Inland Desert Nursery.

JUDKINS: That's where we come in as a certified nursery. We've worked with WSU to establish some of the only mother blocks in the state that provide certified material to growers so growers come to us when they're looking for clean stuff and we work with all the researchers and the industry in order to supply the industry needs.

Keeping a good supply of clean plants has some issues.

JUDKINS: There are several issues and it's an evolving thing like for example we have viruses like Red Blotch that have been around for years but they were just able to test for it and knew that it existed about a year ago. So what was clean a couple of years ago had to be reindexed to see if it had Red Blotch. And some stuff did so it's a new thing as the science gets better we keep finding new stuff.

And Judkins says this is an on-going process.

JUDKINS: Our mother blocks start clean but there is vectors that can spread virus and disease so vector management, staying up with the latest science. In the past Washington material, often Washington plantings were sourced from California so now that we have a local source we have a little bit more control over it. Washington is a great environment for clean plants versus California. Just the colder winters seem to keep the viruses at bay.

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