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.”