February 10, 2016
Program, 8am to noon at Wells Fargo Center for the Arts
7am to 8am: Sign-in and breakfast
$40 if pre-registered by Feb. 19; $45 at the door
Sonoma County Grape Day presents research-based topics of interest to grape growers and vintners. This year Pierce's disease, vine mealybugs, spray technology and berry phenolic composition will be addressed.
The incidence of Pierce's disease (PD) in grapevines has been slowly increasing for the last few years and in 2015, vine losses brought back memories of the PD epidemic in the late ninety's. PD is lethal to grapevines and there is no cure. The bacterium that causes PD resides in non-symptomatic ornamental and riparian plants. It is moved into grapevines by insect vectors after they feed on those plants and then feed on grapevines. Warmer than normal winter temperatures may have changed the relationships between the insect vectors, the bacteria and grapevines which may have resulted in more vine loss.
UC Berkeley researchers and Cooperative Extension advisors have recently started a three-year research project in Sonoma and Napa counties to gain information on vector populations inside vineyards year round, and the incidence of infected versus diseased vines in those sites. The objective is to improve management practices to reduce PD.
Vine Mealybugs
The take-home messages will be presented on a long term study that controlled mealybugs in vineyards for the purpose of reducing grapevine leafroll disease (GLD). Mealybugs are insect vectors of grapevine leafroll virus that causes GLD. Leafroll disease is not lethal; however fruit on diseased vines does not ripen normally and eventually yields are reduced.
Dr.
Kaan Kurtural is the new UC Cooperative Extension Viticulture Specialist at UC Davis and is based at the UC Oakville Station. Most recently he was a professor at California State University in Fresno. His research interests include
vineyard mechanization for optimizing crop load, yield efficiency and sustainability. He will present the outcome of research projects that investigated the development of anthocyanins astringency as affected by canopy management and irrigation amounts.
The invited speaker is Dr. Andrew Landers from Cornell University who is an expert in sprayer technology that has greatly increased spray coverage on the target and not off the target. He will discuss how to improve spray deposition on canopies in narrow vine rows that are common in the North Coast.
View the agenda and register at: www.ucanr.edu\scgrapeday
