Gov. Mark Schweiker addresses the crowd in the Large Arena during
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The Gov. Mark Schweiker family tours the Large Arena aboard the car
riage before opening ceremonies at last year’s Farm Show.
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Lancaster Farming, Saturday, January 11,2003, Farm Show Section-E37
Geneva Researchers Bring
Precision Management To Vineyards
GENEVA, N.Y. New York’s grape
industry is second only to apples as the
state’s largest fruit crop and is valued at
$45.9 million. But this industry, and thou
sands of jobs with it, labor under the shad
ow of Guignardia biwelli, the fungus that
causes black rot one of the most serious
diseases of grapes in the eastern U.S.
“If we didn’t get good control of black
rot, we couldn’t grow grapes in New
York,” said Wayne Wilcox, Cornell Uni
versity professor of plant pathology at the
New York State Agricultural Experiment
Station in Geneva, N.Y.
Fortunately for growers, grape juice
drinkers, wine connoisseurs, and the state
of New York, black rot can be effectively
controlled. But the traditional control
strategy applying as many as eight fun
gicide sprays at regular intervals from
mid-May until August was not good
enough for Wilcox and fellow Experiment
Station pathologists David Gadoury and
Robert Seem.
The three plant pathologists turned
their attention to a control strategy Wilcox
describes as “overkill.” “We started look
ing at spraying more critically, asking
growers ‘when do you really need to
spray?’” he said.
After six years of painstaking research
conducted in cooperation with graduate
student Lisa Hoffman and technician
Duane Riegel, the team is now able to pro
vide growers with a detailed understand
ing of the biology of the disease and vari
ous factors that impact its control. These
include when grapevines are most suscept
ible to the disease, when the disease is
most susceptible to the fungicides used
against it, the specific traits of these indi
vidual fungicides, and precisely when the
vineyards should be treated to provide best
control. They also proved what has long
New Equipment Allows Easier
Drip Tape Installation, Removal
DAWSON, Ga. An Agricultural Re
search Service scientist has developed
farm equipment that installs drip tapes on
or just beneath the soil surface to precisely
irrigate crops after seeds are planted. The
same equipment can retrieve the drip
tapes after crops are harvested. The appa
ratus works with reusable or disposable
drip tape.
The new equipment was designed by
Heping Zhu, an agricultural engineer at
the ARS National Peanut Research Labo
ratory in Dawson, Ga. The device un
iformly distributes drip tape, extracts
water from it, holds and supports the tape,
and guides and adjusts its installation.
The machinery chisels shallow trenches
in the soil, places the tape in the trenches
and then covers the tape with soil. Depth
of drip tapes can be adjusted from 0 to 5
centimeters.
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been suspected, that sanitation-removal of
diseased tissues from the vine during the
dormant pruning process is an extreme
ly valuable component of an integrated
management program.
Their conclusion? An excellent level of
control, the same as with the six-to eight
spray program, can be achieved with just
two or three fungicide sprays, depending
on the season provided that standard sani
tation practices are employed in the vine
yard. The conventional approach was to
begin spraying when there were three to
five inches of shoot growth, around the
middle of May, and continue into August.
The latest recommendation is to spray
once at the start of bloom and once or
twice more at two-week intervals. Addi
tional sprays may be needed to manage
other diseases, depending on the grape va
riety and the year.
Reducing the frequency, and thus the
total amount, of applied pesticide has en
vironmental and economic benefits. It
saves the growers money, both in the cost
of pesticide and the cost of labor, and re
duces the amount of chemicals introduced
into the environment. Reducing spray fre
quency also helps prevent fungicide resis
tance, and ensures that these materials
will still be able to control black rot for
years to come.
In the annually revised publication,
“New York and Pennsylvania Pest Man
agement Recommendations for Grapes,”
research and extension personnel from the
region develop and disseminate the most
current guidelines for disease control.
While other states’ official recommenda
tions call for the same strategy New York
used a decade ago, this region’s guidelines
have been continually refined as a result of
the work of these Cornell researchers.
To retrieve disposable drip tapes, a spe
cial spool, mounted with a 3-point hitch
behind the tractor, was developed to
quickly remove the tapes from the unit.
The inexpensive apparatus both installs
and retrieves the tape.
During removal, Zhu’s device layers the
drip tape evenly across rotating spools,
which squeeze out any remaining water.
Retrieval speed can be adjusted by chang
ing the tractor power takeoff speed. The
drip tapes can then be reused during sub
sequent growing seasons.
In many crop production schemes, drip
irrigation has advantages over other meth
ods. It has been widely used in various ap
plications throughout the world, resulting
in crop yield increases and improved
water conservation.
But surface drip irrigation’s disadvan
tage is that users have to install and re
trieve drip tapes every year, requiring high
labor costs and more time.
So the new equipment should greatly
benefit farmers using surface drip irriga
tion technology by increasing their crop
yield and reducing their production costs.
ARS is seeking a partner to further devel
op and commercialize the device.
Pennsylvania
Farm Show
2003