Texas Plant Disease Diagnostic Lab-
WHAT Wednesday Videos
Category Archives: Outreach
Resources mentioned at the 2nd Annual Fruit Conference
Today, I had the opportunity to speak to the participants in the 2nd annual Texas Fruit Conference. I was given the topic of “Stone fruit disease management: homeowner versus commercial”. Majority of the participants in this meeting are commercial growers and hobbyists. My talk contrasted the differences between a commercial grower and a homeowner: the number of plants that deal with, the different level of management, the amount and type of inputs, and the stakes that are involved. Two common peach diseases that occur in Texas were used… Read More →
Training opportunity for Master Gardeners volunteers – a call to action
One of the most robust programs for volunteers is the Master Gardener program in Texas (Texas A&M Agrilife Extension). This is where folks who are interested in gardening register to take classes from various experts in plants, plant health management and horticulture. (Check out their website at http://txmg.org ). To help with some of the continuing education efforts for these valuable volunteers, there is the Master Gardener Specialist program which provides a little more “bulk” information and training to these volunteers in various areas of gardening such as vegetable growing and… Read More →
What is Plant Pathology?
Today, we celebrate the last day in August. I had mentioned some of the activities that happened at the 2012 American Phytopathological Society meeting (which is the professional society for Plant Disease people). The plenary session was targeted to help us (the plant pathologist) to be better communicators of our discipline. The speakers made a video of people in their neighborhood asking them if they would support the efforts of the American Phytopathological Society. It was pretty funny (and sad) to see the responses of these folks as… 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 →
