01/09/07 Fighting Fire Blight

Fighting Fire Blight. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Every year, tree fruit growers monitor their orchards for signs of fire blight a disease that spreads from the trees flowers into the limbs and trunk eventually severely damaging or killing the tree. Now a new "good" bacterium has been developed that slows and may help prevent fire blight. Tim Smith, WSU Extension Agent SMITH: There's very few things we can do to prevent this disease and this is an addition of a product we have a lot of hope for. The new product has recently been approved by the FDA and is safe for humans but inhibits fire blight. SMITH: The intention is for you to put that on early after the flower opens up and have it get on that stigma tip first and kind of take over the stigma tip and keep the bad guys from getting there and building up. The bacterium, named Bloomtime FD, was developed by Northwest Ag Products in Pasco, Washington and according to Robert Venable, Director of Biosciences the product will be tested this spring. But Smith says the hardest part of using this product will be knowing when to use it. SMITH: We look at the weather that is coming and what we know about the disease and we can give people a guess in the next 3 or 4 days about whether this disease is going to be dangerous. What we don't have with this new product is an answer. In order for that to happen it would have to be curative. You know, oh my goodness I have fire blight and you can spray something on it to cure it. Well, we don't have anything like that and we probably never will. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.