Nathan Kleczewski, Extension Specialist – Plant Pathology; nkleczew@udel.edu
This year I will once again be providing late blight monitoring updates. If you are interested in receiving updates, please contact me at nkleczew@udel.edu and indicate how you would like to receive the notices. Green row is perhaps 2 weeks away, so please let me know soon.
If you recall I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that the DEOS weather systems will be tied into the Cornell DSS late blight prediction system. We expect this will be finalized within the next week or so, which means that when you set up fields you will be able to select the DEOS station that is most appropriate for a given field or set of fields. This should greatly improve the accuracy of the model across the state. I encourage scouts and producers to check out the DSS. It can be found at the link located at http://www.usablight.org/dss. There also is a brief tutorial on how to use the system, although honestly, it’s very intuitive. What does the DSS allow you to do?
- Standard Blitecast readings (what we have used in the past).
- Predicted Blitecast readings based on future weather.
- Another disease forecast system (Simcast) that includes fungicide weathering and varietal susceptibility in determining the need for fungicide.
- The ability experiment (virtually) with different fungicide strategies before actually making an application.
All of this information can be sent to an email or your phone, or you can log in and check it as you want. You can use it on multiple fields, so when you receive a report everything is available as a list, for your reading pleasure. It’s also free, another bonus.