How To Recognize Turnip Diseases?

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Turnip is the most useful fleshy root vegetable, very willingly grown by summer residents. It is tasty, healthy and cold hardy. However, at the same time, turnip, like many other cultures, is often affected by various dangerous ailments. White or gray rot, keels, vascular bacteriosis, ill-fated powdery mildew, destructive mosaic and destructive black leg can easily attack the grown turnip. How do you recognize these ailments?

Rot

Often, growing turnips are affected by extremely unpleasant white rot. Infected tissues become watery, discolored, and covered with whitish cotton wool mycelium. And disgusting gray rot often overcomes turnips during storage.

Turnip is not insured against infection with dry rot (phomoz). Infected roots and leaves are covered with dark spots, which, in turn, are overgrown with a small fluff. It is recommended to spray a turnip attacked by fomoz with one percent Bordeaux liquid.

Downy mildew

This disease, also known as peronosporosis, develops mainly on turnip leaves: numerous chlorotic specks initially form on their upper sides, turning over time into oily and angular light yellow spots. A little later, these spots begin to turn brown, and on the undersides of the leaves, just below them, you can notice an unpleasant bloom of a grayish-purple color.

Powdery mildew

This ailment affects not only turnip leaves, but also stalks with petioles. On their surfaces, the development of a powdery white bloom begins, after some time it turns into light brown tones. It is especially noticeable on the upper sides of the leaves. Infected leaves are deformed and gradually dry out, as a result of which the growing crops noticeably lag behind in growth.

To combat powdery mildew, it is necessary to strictly follow the rules of crop rotation, observe the spatial isolation of crops of all vegetable crops belonging to the numerous cruciferous family, and also treat the turnip with drugs that suppress the development of this ailment.

Mosaic

Another unpleasant attack. Mosaic-infected turnips are dwarfed, and their leaves show bizarre ring patterns, numerous necrotic specks and unsightly chlorotic areas. Also, when affected by mosaics, curly leaves can often be observed. The main carriers of this devastating disease are weevils and aphids.

Blackleg

This attack most often affects seedlings. With a lesion with a black leg, the upper parts of the root crops and the lower parts of the leaf rosettes become thinner and darker, and the tissues of the root crops noticeably soften. A little later, the infected surfaces are covered with a whitish mycelium, and if the roots are cut, their tissues on the cuts will be dark.

It is quite possible to avoid the development of a black leg if you take fresh soil for seedlings, systematically ventilate the premises, do not thicken the crops and do not overmoisten the soil.

Keela

This fungal disease mainly affects the root system of the growing turnip - the emerging roots are covered with numerous tubercles and growths, as a result of which the turnip leaves gradually dry out. Acid soils are especially favorable for the development of keels.

To cope with this scourge, some gardeners water the turnip with horseradish infusion, for the preparation of which about 400 g of chopped horseradish roots or leaves are poured with ten liters of water and the mixture is infused for four hours.

Vascular bacteriosis

A fairly common disease. Turnip leaves affected by vascular bacteriosis first turn yellow, and then darken and dry out. This disease is transmitted through seeds, soil, infected plants and plant debris, and its pathogens can persist for up to three years!

Plants with vascular bacteriosis are necessarily burned, and the seeds are disinfected in water with a temperature of fifty degrees for twenty minutes before sowing.