Use of Ultraviolet Light to Suppress Powdery Mildew in Strawberry Fruit Production Fields

Abstract

We designed and deployed an apparatus to apply UV light for suppression of powdery mildew in open field production of strawberry. The unit was evaluated in a commercial production field for one season, and for two additional seasons in open field research plots at the University of Florida Gulf Coast Research and Education Center. The apparatus contained two 180-cm-long hemicylindrical arrays of twenty 55-W low-pressure discharge UV-C lamps (operated at 30 W; peak wavelength = 254 nm) backed by polished aluminum reflectors covering two adjacent beds of the strawberry planting. The lamp arrays were suspended within a steel carriage that was tractor-drawn through the planting at 2.3, 4.6, and 5.6 km h^-1. Nighttime applications of UV-C at doses ranging from 65 to 170 J⋅m^-2 either once or twice weekly provided suppression of foliar and fruit disease that was consistently equal to or better than that provided by a commercial calendar-based fungicide spray program.

Keywords: Podosphaera aphanis; UV-C; disease management; powdery mildew; strawberry; ultraviolet.