Michigan State University says that Timothy Miles, an assistant professor in the university’s department of plant, soil and microbial sciences earned a $3.95 million grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture to develop strategies for implementing and maintaining effective management practices for blueberry fruit rot.
The Michigan Ag Council estimates the state has more than 20,000 acres of blueberries in production that contribute more than $132 million to the state’s economy, according to a university news story.
MSU says the two most common fruit rot diseases that strike blueberries include Anthracnose fruit rot and Botrytis fruit rot. Anthracnose fruit rot, also known as “ripe rot,” wilts blueberries and produces spore masses that appear as orange speckles. Botrytis fruit rot typically occurs in cooler temperatures and presents as gray mold on blueberries and other crops.
The university said this research will use advances in technology from multiple universities to study fruit rot across the country.
“What makes this research unique is that it’s a coordinated effort (from multiple institutions) to study fruit rot across the U.S., and in blueberries that hasn’t happened before on this large of a scale,” Miles told the university.
MSU said the objectives of the project include:
- To learn how management techniques impact the onset of fruit rot.
- To apply molecular tools to accelerate the time it takes to detect fungicide resistance in pathogens.
- To generate cultivar-specific fruit quality models to predict fruit vulnerability to rots and use optical-imaging technology to filter and sort blueberries vulnerable to fruit rot.
- To provide efficient ways for growers and field specialists can access information drawn from the conducted research.
- To make findings and recommendations easily and widely available through the project’s website.
Researchers will also develop models to help pinpoint berry ripeness to prevent fruit rot with new imaging technology, according to the release.
Josh Vander Weide, an assistant professor in MSU’s horticulture department and another researcher that a part of the grant, told the university that this project could help lessen the use of fungicides, thus delaying the impact of fungicide resistance.
“Fruit rots tend to develop near harvest, so there are some practices we can employ to minimize disease pressure,” Vander Weide said in the report. “This not only involves better defining which cultivars are more resistant (to these pathogens) but also what kind of harvest scenarios prolong disease development.”
The university said the research team will observe how fruit rot pathogens develop in relation to weather conditions and blueberry maturity. Researchers also hope to deploy new technology to sort infected blueberries to limit the spread of the pathogen postharvest.
“A greater percentage of fruit rot development occurs in the cartons you’re buying from the grocery store than on the plant,” Vander Weide said. “That’s why sometimes when we buy blueberries from the store, they’re moldy within a few days. The likelihood that this occurs depends on the cultivar, as well as when they’re harvested and how far they’re shipped.”
