12/19/07 Replanting Problems

Replanting Problems. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. For orchardists, replanting trees has come at a risk. Replant disease has been as elusive as a ghost and a lot of time and effort has gone into discovering not only the cause but how to get around it, according WSU Extension agent Tim Smith. SMITH: We tried a lot of different things and I made a list a few years ago about all the things that were supposed to work and we tested them all and most of them fell flat on their face especially if you got into any sort of extensive test. Smith says a one way around the replant problem is by rotating to another crop like wheat. And while this helps, it has its own problem. SMITH: You still have to have quite a period of time and most of the time the grower wants to replant orchard because he's in the orchard business and especially in places like Yakima County and places where  especially in North Central Washington we don't have and alternative crop. We grow tree fruit or nothing. Smith says there are ways to combat the problem but they only tend to work on a very small scale like in a greenhouse and aren't feasible on a large scale operation but there may be some light at the end of the tunnel by changing root stocks. SMITH: There are some things down the road that might help. We've done some test in this industry that shows that there are some feasible apple root stocks out there that have produced in Geneva. One we're really excited about is called Geneva 41. Well Geneva 41 is resistant to a lot of things that the Molly 9 is susceptible to. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.