Strawberries and Caneberries

As readers of this space know, I from time to time post job announcements with relevance to our area, and especially those oriented towards working in the berries.

Although many industry people have been focused over the past several years on wilt caused by Fusarium, Verticillium wilt continues to be a soil disease issue in strawberry.

Seeing that I just handled my third call in just a week's time on a weird "lygus sort" of bug appearing in great numbers in some strawberry fields I thought it would be worth a note to share what is going on.

Good morning. The quarterly reports this last week of two of America's best big box retailers, Walmart and Target, rocked the stock market not only for their disappointing results but also for the dim view they described of the retail environment in general.

I had the picture below sent to me just this morning by Joji Muramoto and student assistant Cole Margarite of an unusual discovery they made while picking strawberries. In the photo provided by Cole below, that cluster of round white objects stuck to the side of the berry are stink bug eggs.