2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
The bushiness of raspberries is also called "witch's broom" or overgrowth. In raspberry bushes infected with this ailment, fruiting can not only decrease, but even stop altogether. In addition, infected bushes often freeze out. In the non-chernozem zone of Russia, this ailment causes the greatest harm. Sometimes, in addition to raspberries, bushiness can also affect blackberries. And it manifests itself equally on adult raspberry bushes and on young ones
A few words about the disease
When affected by this ailment, root shoots (very thin shoots) in a huge amount are formed on the raspberry bushes. Sometimes there are as many as 250 of them per bush. All of the aforementioned shoots emerge from the same relatively small area of the rhizome. They are much shorter than healthy ones - the height of such processes reaches a maximum of fifteen centimeters, and the leaves on them are very small. Shoots form very dense bunches - it is this feature that determined the name of the misfortune.
There are a number of raspberry varieties on which bushiness is also manifested in the form of overgrowth of flowers. At the same time, the pistil with stamens is underdeveloped, and the petals with sepals turn into ugly leaf-like formations.
Often there is a chronic form of bushiness - it is characterized by a rather long life of the bushes (up to ten years or even more), which are weakening more and more every year. It is noteworthy that berry bushes do not recover even with proper agrotechnical care - and although if all the rules for growing this crop are observed, the symptoms of damage may slightly weaken, they still will not disappear completely.
Causes the "witch's broom" mycoplasma (it is assigned an intermediate position between bacteria and viruses), spreading in a variety of ways: by sucking insects, with planting material (more precisely, with root shoots), insatiable herbivorous mites, with the juice of infected crops and during grafting on healthy bushes infected cuttings. Another carrier of the pathogen is the leafhopper Macropsis fuscula. Garden tools devoid of intermediate disinfection can contribute to its spread. Focal distribution of bushiness is quite common. However, the disease spreads extremely quickly. Scientists managed to establish that the area with twelve percent of infected berry bushes is completely affected two years later.
Most often, bush infestation occurs in August and September of the very first growing season.
The most prone to overgrowth are raspberry varieties such as Carnaval, Barnaulskaya, Progress, Cutberg, Sovetskaya, Glen Clova, Marlborough, Kaliningradskaya, Molling Jowel, Usanka, Zheltaya Spirina, Visluha and Novosty Kuzmina.
How to fight
Basically, the methods of combating bushiness are only preventive in nature, since it is far from always possible to get rid of viral diseases. Systematic treatment of raspberries against sucking insects, the use of only high-quality and healthy planting material, as well as compliance with quarantine measures are the main ways to prevent the ill-fated "witch's broom". It is recommended to periodically heal the planting material. You can also pick up varieties resistant to this scourge - these include Alma-Ata, Golden Queen, Phoenix, Newburgh, Muskoka and Latan.
Good care of raspberries can also increase the stability of raspberry plantings (feeding with mineral and organic fertilizers, as well as thorough soil cultivation).
Before flowering (when the buds have already become isolated), as well as at the end of the harvest, in order to control the vectors of bushiness, it is recommended to spray the berry plantings with Actellik. And raspberry bushes with manifestations of the "witch's broom" are uprooted and immediately burned.
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