Temperatures might be right for snow, but Michigan’s apple growers are already planning for their 2022 fungicide applications.
Eric Ott, field market development specialist with Valent, says the company has a new fungicide called Excalia that is seeing success.
“[Especially] with apple scab, powdery mildew and some of the rusts,” he says. “It has good, local systemic connectivity as well as long residual. Every year is an apple scab year, just a matter of how severe things are, but it’s very effective on apple scab.”
Scab development depends on early season weather conditions. Ott says that even though 2021’s season was dry, apple scab was a prominent disease.
“It’s a problem every year, its just a matter of the severity,” he says. “2019 was a really bad scab year. 2020 we had some issues with scab, but since 2021 was drier during the early season, it wasn’t as bad but we still had scab.”
Excalia would be applied between green tip and petal fall in the primary apple scab window. Ott says Valent’s product portfolio can help growers from bud to box. For more information, talk with your local Valent retailer or visit valent.com.
