Latest news with #NeoP
CTV News
26-06-2025
- Health
- CTV News
New fungal disease threatening strawberry crops across Canada
Fresh strawberries are seen at Montreal's Jean Talon Market, on Tuesday, June 16, 2020. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/Paul Chiasson) A new fungal disease is threatening strawberry crops across Canada. Known as Neopestalotiopsis, or 'Neo-P' for short, there is no known cure for the disease, which can spread quickly and affect all parts of the plant. 'It's basically taking out what should be a healthy strawberry plant and making it very weak,' P.E.I. strawberry farmer Matthew Compton told CTV's Your Morning. 'Where I should see a really wide, matted row of strawberries, I see a really narrow row of strawberries – and I would see a lot of skips in between where some of the infected plants may have died out.' Compton is the owner and operator of Compton's Farm Market in Summerside, P.E.I. He says the fungal disease has already decimated early varieties of strawberries that he would normally be harvesting now. 'There's one variety that we will not harvest,' Compton said. 'The other variety, that three acres, we're going to get about half a crop off it, so better than nothing.' Compton estimates that these losses will cause between a 20 to 25 per cent hit to his overall business this year. While nothing can fully save an infected plant, fungicides can keep the disease from spreading. 'There's no fungicide that's going to eradicate Neo-P,' Compton said. 'It'll keep it at bay if it's there, but it won't get rid of it.' Such a fungicide was recently approved for emergency use in strawberry fields in Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador. Neo-P was first recorded in Florida in 2017, where it led to severe outbreaks in strawberry fields. It has since been found in Mexico and parts of the eastern U.S. and Canada. The first Canadian case was reported in Ontario in 2020. A 2021 alert from Ontario's Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs urged growers to be on the lookout for the disease, which 'has shown to be economically damaging in other jurisdictions.' 'On leaves, look for small leaf spots with a light centre and slightly darker border that expands and becomes irregular in shape,' the ministry alert explained. 'Eventually, the whole fruit may be rotted and mummified.'
CBC
10-06-2025
- Climate
- CBC
P.E.I. strawberry farmer hopeful more Islanders will buy local amid disease concerns
With strawberry season around the corner, one Prince Edward Island farmer is sharing his concerns about a new disease that's affecting some crops. Matthew Compton, owner and operator of Compton's Farm Market in Summerside, said his strawberries will be ready to pick in just over two weeks, though other growers on P.E.I.'s South Shore will be ready sooner. "We had some really warm weather at the latter part of winter, which kind of dried things out and strawberries started to come out of their dormancy," Compton said. The plants are similar to a bear, he said, because they'll go dormant from the winter until the spring. Some of the winter conditions to grow good strawberries include "good snow cover [and] a good steady temperature." Compton said there are some things that still worry him about this year's crop, but those worries will only last for the next few days. "It's been a little cooler, as everyone knows, rain every weekend, which kind of worries us for disease pressure. Disease thrives in wet weather," he said. "Other than that, we're one or two more days to get through the frost zone here to make sure we're going to be safe for the year and things look good." A new concern He's also worried about a new disease that affects strawberries — neopestalotiopsis, or Neo-P, is a fungal disease that can cause leaf spots and lead to rotting. There is no known cure. Compton found it on some of is berries last year. He said all strawberry farmers on the Island are dealing with disease, but some have it much harder than he does. "With it being really warm and dry for certain parts of the year last year, especially when we planted our strawberries, it caused some new issues that we've never seen before," he said. "It looked like other diseases in the field that we were known to able to treat and eradicate, but it really affected what we call out first-year harvest plants for us and about a half a dozen other growers on Prince Edward Island."
