Growing Virus Free Plants

I'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.

In the orchard or wine grape industry making sure you have clean plants is good, very good. Janet Heath, Program Manager for the Washington Association of Wine Grape Growers explains why.

HEATH: Clean plants are very, very important to the industry, and in this instance we're talking about virus free grape-vine plants. The reason they're important is that virus infected plants have lower yields, lower sugars, the clusters are smaller, there's uneven ripening - maladies that lend themselves to lesser quality grapes, which in turn produce lesser quality wine.

To help educate growers about the need for clean plants the Wine Grape Growers Association is conducting their Clean Plant Education Summer Tour.

HEATH: The Summer Tour is an annual event, and we always address some current topic in the industry. There's a huge educational component but there's also an element of fun. What we learn is reinforced by real life experience and demonstration.

On the tour Thursday they will be discussing grape vine viruses.

HEATH: We're going to start out with a little bit of classroom education talking about the importance of clean plants - why and how clean plants are made. Then we're going to head out to WSU-IAREC and visit with Dr. Naidu Rayapati. He's going to talk about symptoms of viruses, how we confirm them through testing. We're also going to visit the foundation block at IAREC and then we're going to go out to Inland Desert Nursery and see how plants from the foundation block are taken and propagated to create virus free plants for our growers.

To learn more about tomorrow's tour visit their website at www.wawgg.org.

That's Washington Ag Today.

I'm Lacy Gray on the Ag Information Network.