Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab-
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Diplodia blight (Training at the Plant Clinic part2)
Blog article #2 by Marissa McCarthy (for partial fulfillment of BESC 484 requirement) Diplodia is most often parasitic fungus, can be found to be saprophytic, that is extremely host specific on pine hosts or other conifer species. This Diplodia was found on a Juniper from a private residence that was submitted to the lab. Chief complaint was new growth and tip yellowing and necrosis. Diplodia is found across the vast majority of the United States including Hawaii and California, and affects most species of pine or conifer…. Read More →
Training at the Plant Clinic
One of the functions that the Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab is to be a training ground for our students at Texas A&M University. We have had a somewhat open-door policy for student from the Department of Plant Pathology and Microbiology and the associated undergraduate BioEnvironmental Science (BESC) program. In addition to that, we have hosted an international Borlaug Fellow who came for short term training in plant pathology & diagnostics. This summer, a undergraduate student worker is parlaying her work at the Plant Clinic into an internship to… Read More →
Oak Wilt information
Things are starting to heat up (weather wise) and we are beginning to see more influx of samples for oak wilt pathogen detection. Oak wilt is a disease cause by a fungus and can kill trees. The Texas live oaks and various red oaks are susceptible to this disease. There has been so many question asked, such as “Why is my tree dying?”, ” How did it get infected?”, or ” Why is my neighbor’s tree healthy but mine is dying?”. Then we also have the question, “How… Read More →
Look out for Impatiens downy mildew
Apologize for the long silence, but been spending many days answering emails and phone calls. Things have been busy at the clinic with many different issues. Unfortunately, there is one that prompted me to write this blog entry. Several weeks ago, I received a couple of photos of bad looking impatiens. One of those leaves show symptoms which was suspicious of downy mildew. So I requested that a physical sample be sent to the Plant Clinic. Sure enough, we were able to find the water mold (Plasmopara obducens)… Read More →
Fireblight….it’s back!
I have neglected this page a little in the past couple of weeks as things have gotten busy. To ensure continued flow of “goodies” from the clinic, I have assigned a student worker and plant disease enthusiast to post photos of what we saw at the Plant Clinic’s Facebook page. If you have not been there, check us out – http://www.facebook.com/TXPlantClinic. In the past few days, we have been getting reports and samples of ornamental pear trees with nasty looking black shoots. This is one of the symptoms of a… Read More →
