Collaborative Efforts Leads to New Greenhouse Powdery Mildew Control Option
February 8, 2023 Powdery mildew can affect a wide range of greenhouse vegetable crops, including cucumbers, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers. Fruit yield losses can reach as much as 20% for cucumber growers. Although several species of powdery mildew affect fruiting greenhouse vegetables, Leveillula taurica is especially difficult to control.
The good news is, thanks to joint efforts by the IR-4 Project (IR-4) and the Canadian Pest Management Centre (PMC), the EPA published a final rule on July 5, 2022, approving new tolerances to allow for use of pyriofenone on greenhouse tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant. With this IR-4 submission, greenhouse growers will have an approved use on cucumbers once the new label is published.
Since the greenhouse vegetable industry is small in acreage size compared to other field, pest management products can often be less accessible. Groups like IR-4, PMC, and others help identify safe, effective pest control products for use on specialty crops, making them key allies of greenhouse vegetable producers throughout North America.
Michael Bledsoe, Vice President of Food Safety and Regulatory Affairs at Village Farms International, works with greenhouse vegetable growers in the U.S. and Canada to identify diseases and insects that can cause major problems with these crops and potential pest management tools that could gain label registration.
“For the last 15 years, there has been a team of greenhouse growers in the U.S. and Canada that is interested in gaining product registrations,” Bledsoe says. “Ultimately, researchers were able to discover that the fungicide pyriofenone controls this powdery mildew species.”
Bledsoe stated that, because of persistent fungal issues in greenhouse production, growers in the U.S. approached IR-4 for assistance with registration of this fungicide on tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and eggplant. Pyriofenone has proven effective on other powdery mildew species, including Oidium neolycopersici on tomatoes and some other species that infect cucumbers. Pyriofenone can be used in rotation with other fungicides, but there are no others as effective at controlling the Leveillula species, so growers were keen to see this registration approved.
Continue reading at ir4project.org.
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