The telephone message on Pickaberry’s U-pick saskatoon farm is a shock for saskatoon lovers. A fungus has halted this year’s crop and there will be no berries for sale.
“It’s really sad. We have tons of berries, but none that are salable,” said Karen Sollid, owner of the Camrose, Alta., saskatoon orchard.
Entomosporium leaf and berry spot, a fungus that spreads from the leaves to the berries in hot, humid weather, wiped out Sollid’s saskatoon crop. The microscopic spores spread during flowering but create brown spots or white tracking on the berries and make them suitable only for juice.
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Sollid is not alone. Clarence Peters, Saskatchewan Agriculture’s fruit development specialist, estimated more than half the 2,000 acres of prairie saskatoon orchards are affected this year.
“It’s certainly widespread here,” he said.
“A lot of orchards won’t have any crop. It’s fairly extensive and the damage is fairly severe in most orchards.”
Growers who attempted to control the disease will have a crop, but those who missed applying a fungicide will likely have a bad infestation, he said.
Three fungicides are registered for use against entomosporium: Topaz, Kumulus and Funginex.
Peters said the disease is likely too advanced by now to use a fungicide.
Other control measures include watering the ground, not the foliage, and keeping foliage off the bottom third of young plants.
The disease will overwinter on fallen leaves and dried fruit and could be a problem again next year depending on the weather.
Peters said entomosporium is always present to some degree.
“Anyone who is growing saskatoons has to follow the regimen for protecting a crop,” he said, adding growers became complacent over the past few years of hot, dry weather when entomosporium wasn’t a problem.
Sollid said he sprayed fungicide on his orchard, but it didn’t stop the fungus from spreading onto the older saskatoon bushes.
Barry Isaac of Last Mountain Berry Farms in Southey, Sask., estimated he will lose about one-third of the berries on his 12-acre orchard.
Isaac sprayed most of the orchard, but entomosporium flourished in the areas he couldn’t get to because of wet conditions.
It’s a similar story for other growers who supply the commercial broker with 200,000 pounds of berries a year, he said.
Growers who applied fungicides are fine, but those who didn’t or couldn’t won’t have a crop.
Rod Flaman of South Valley Farm in Edenwold, Sask., said saskatoon orchards across the province have been hit hard.
“It’s a wreck,” he said.
“Every year you get hit by something and this year this is it.”
Arden Delidais of DNA Gardens in Elnora, Alta., said she doesn’t have a problem, but has armed herself with knowledge of the disease.
“My crop is perfectly fine. I don’t have entomosporium, but I know what I’m doing,” she said.
“It seems like people have to learn the hard way.”
She recommended producers go to berry schools organized by provincial fruit growers associations to learn about saskatoon diseases.
“There are berry schools growers need to go to to protect their crop.”
Delidais said she helped raise more than $100,000 to obtain minor use registration of fungicides for saskatoons.
“If growers are not using those products, they will have problems.”
Arnie Myer of Clairmont, Alta., said his Berry Basket saskatoon orchard has only a small amount of entomosporium. A combination of drier weather in the Peace River area and a spraying program has kept it almost free of the disease.
“We’ve sprayed, but we haven’t had the wet weather to deal with,” he said.
