How To Recognize Lettuce Diseases?

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

Lettuce is a favorite of many gourmets. Its juicy crispy leaves perfectly complement various dishes. It's just to grow these very leaves - a huge work, because the salad is often amazed with a wide variety of ailments. Some of them are successfully treated, and some diseases still lead to the complete death of plants. How to figure out what exactly the salad got sick with?

White rot

This attack covers all the above-ground organs of the growing lettuce. Initially, the infection penetrates into the leaves in contact with the soil or into the leaves lying on it, and subsequently through their petioles it passes into the stems, on which watery light specks are gradually formed. Sometimes the spots are also characterized by a rusty or grayish-brownish color. In addition, white mushroom bloom can be seen on all infected tissues of the lettuce.

Excessive humidity and temperatures from twenty-four to twenty-seven degrees are especially favorable for the development of white rot.

Gray rot

Neither leaves with stems, nor heads of cabbage, nor testes with seeds can be protected from it. On the leaves located near the soil surface, unpleasant brownish specks form. Often, such spots are located along the edges of the leaves, and only after some time does the disease penetrate into the leaf sinuses, provoking rotting of the stems and heads of cabbage with leaves.

Powdery mildew

Lettuce heads and leaves with stalks are affected by powdery mildew with equal force. Infected plants are characterized by chloroticity and the formation of an unpleasant whitish powdery coating, and their development and growth are significantly inhibited. Testes are especially strongly affected at the flowering stage and during the period of seed ripening.

The development of the ill-fated disease is largely facilitated by sharp temperature fluctuations during the day and at night. And the pathogen remains mainly in the post-harvest residues.

Peronosporosis

This ailment affects lettuce inflorescences, as well as testis twigs and heads of cabbage with leaves. On the upper sides of the affected leaves, you can see angular or blurry specks, the color of which can vary from light green to yellowish shades. And on the undersides of the leaves, a whitish bloom of fungal sporulation is formed. If peronosporosis begins to rage, then the specks will gradually turn brown, and the leaves will dry out.

The increased humidity of the air creates especially favorable conditions for the development of this destructive scourge. Poor ventilation and the presence of drip-liquid moisture also make a serious contribution to its development.

Edge burn

The development of this scourge is facilitated by the introduction of various nutrients into the soil in excess quantities. The growing lettuce begins to rot, and gradually the rot covers the entire plants, as a result of which they immediately die.

Blackleg

This disease affects only seedlings. The lower parts of the stems near the root necks begin to gradually turn black, and some time later, depressed brownish specks appear on them. Then the infected areas of the stems become thinner and immediately break. The consequence of such transformations is the inevitable death of salad seedlings. And since the black leg is incredibly infectious, vegetation often perishes in whole foci.

Rhizoctonia

This disease is especially harmful in greenhouses. On tiny seedlings, rotting of the roots with stalks can be observed - such manifestations partially resemble the symptoms of a black leg. The lower parts of the stems located near the root necks turn brown and quickly darken, and a little later they become thinner and bent, leading to the complete death of seedlings.

And in adult plants attacked by rhizoctonia, the leaves quickly darken and dry out, and in the axils of the leaves and on the lower parts of the stems, slightly depressed brownish specks can be seen, which eventually become covered with an unpleasant whitish bloom and gradually turn into brownish tones.