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Here are the pictures we discussed. I am wondering if this is a residue from the salts coming from the moisture pushing out through the cut vines. If not, I have found no other reference to a similar condition in the references I have.
Any information we can find would be helpful.
Unfortunately these pictures are low quality from a camera phone. I will have to get a better camera to have handy in the vineyard
Any information we can find would be helpful.
Unfortunately these pictures are low quality from a camera phone. I will have to get a better camera to have handy in the vineyard
1 comment:
The following is the result of a request for help from Ben Beale
Extension Educator-Agricultural Sciences
Co-County Extension Director
St. Mary's County Extension Office
Po Box 663
Leonardtown, MD 20650
I tried sending you a response from Anne DeMarsay last week but am having trouble getting tit to go through. So I am pasting her comments below. I don’t think it is anything to worry about.
Ben
Hi, Ben,
I opened the photos you sent in Photoshop and blew them up as far as the resolution would allow. It's hard to tell what the consistency of the white material is, but it looks inorganic to me. I agree that it is probably nonpathogenic and further, harmless. Is it a white, crystalline substance about the consistency of baking soda? Did anyone taste it to see whether it's salty?
I'm reminded of a similar mystery in NJ last year. In late April, a friend who was a Rutgers plant path. technician and now works for a blueberry grower sent me photos of white crystals on blueberry buds (see attached). She had seen them in two fields, one of them belonging to an organic grower. No one had sprayed anything yet that season. We never did figure out what the stuff was, but it washed off in the rain and the bushes were unaffected.
So, unless the grower wants to have it chemically analyzed, we may never know. It could be some kind of plant exudate that came out in high humidity and precipitated, or a salt that got deposited on the vines by rain or snow, perhaps via a Pseudomonas (the bacteria that nucleates ice crystals); this is all speculation. Please let me know if it doesn't wash away or seems to be causing some kind of problem for the vine.
Anne
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