hops deficiency

[willow wolf]

Hi guys does anyone recognise this leaf deficiency? my theories are I may have added too much potassium, causing calcium deficiency,

or possibly that the soil is too salty, as its the household compost pile, too much sodium.

Its well watered so not that.

I have applied trace elements a few times so they should have the micronutrients available.

I'm hoping not virus, but the way the edges are burning doesn't look like it.

the bine worst affected has a massive crop of cones, but the leaves mostly browned off. some cones are affected but still look ok by and large.

 

[willow wolf]

Hi guys does anyone recognise this leaf deficiency? my theories are I may have added too much potassium, causing calcium deficiency,

or possibly that the soil is too salty, as its the household compost pile, too much sodium.

Its well watered so not that.

I have applied trace elements a few times so they should have the micronutrients available.

I'm hoping not virus, but the way the edges are burning doesn't look like it.

the bine worst affected has a massive crop of cones, but the leaves mostly browned off. some cones are affected but still look ok by and large.

here are the cones, you can see some browned off leaves in the pic. no doubt plenty of potassium. I have no idea of what the variety is...

 

[bellhp]

Disclaimer ...I'm not an expert on hops , growing my first one now ... and also I'm not familiar with Australian plant diseases . But if I had to GUESS ... I'd say that is fungal related .
Being that the plant is in an active compost pile could be a factor.
Research brown spot disease for more clues .Hops are apparently susceptible to several such as Downy mildew etc. , start a new compost pile somewhere else and let the soil dry out a bit between waterings would be my free advise until you figure it out ... good luck . And water the soil not the leaves when you water .

 

[willow wolf]

thanks for that.
I do water the leaves to keep the mites under control.
we don't have downy mildew here in Aus, and I have never seen any powdery mildew either.

It could be another fungus, like septoria but this just doesn't have the look of fungus to me. we also have very low air humidity here and not much rain at the moment. fungus usually follows a pattern of the areas of poor air circulation being affected first, but this is the other way around.

some of the cones are starting to brown off and die before they are mature now also, in the same manner as the leaves.

This plant has a massive crop on it, but im not really that keen on harvesting it as i think its a bittering hop.

However I would really like to know the cause of this so that in future if I have the same issues with other hops that I do want to use, I know how to fix it.

 

[bellhp]

Well I wish you luck. Mine has had some leaves eaten by leaf hoppers , but I sprayed it with Neem oil and that seems to have discouraged them for now. we are just going into Spring here so mine only has a few bines coming up and it's a new Ryzome .
Hope you get a better answer for your problem from someone with more experience .

 

[kumah]

thanks for that.
I do water the leaves to keep the mites under control.
we don't have downy mildew here in Aus, and I have never seen any powdery mildew either.

It could be another fungus, like septoria but this just doesn't have the look of fungus to me. we also have very low air humidity here and not much rain at the moment. fungus usually follows a pattern of the areas of poor air circulation being affected first, but this is the other way around.

some of the cones are starting to brown off and die before they are mature now also, in the same manner as the leaves.

This plant has a massive crop on it, but im not really that keen on harvesting it as i think its a bittering hop.

However I would really like to know the cause of this so that in future if I have the same issues with other hops that I do want to use, I know how to fix it.

How frequently are you watering the leaves? I wonder if you might be just washing off the powdery mildew each time. This is really boggling my mind because it really looks like damage from downy mildew, and I wanted to challenge you on saying you don't have that in Australia... but all I could find was articles talking about how well Australia has kept it out! Are there any universities there that accept plant samples from the public for disease diagnostic purposes? If so, you may want to send them a sample in case you actually do have an outbreak. Either way... I wouldn't grow things out of an active compost pile. It's quite literally a breeding ground of fungi and bacteria that break down plant cells.

I don't think this is a deficiency problem. Deficiency is pretty easy to diagnose because, being an issue of chemistry, their patterns are pretty regular. It's not Calcium deficiency, that looks more like a bleaching between the veins. It's not a potassium deficiency, because while that does have a browning at the tips of leaves, it's much more uniform, and only at the tips, whereas you have browning throughout the leaf sporadically.

Too much sodium looks similar to potassium deficiency, but a bit more intense.

This does remind me a little of Apple Mosaic Virus, but there's no 'rings' forming, so I am skeptical. It can cause browning. Do you have any more pictures of infected leaves? I'd be curious if there is more of a pattern here.

 

[kumah]

Well I wish you luck. Mine has had some leaves eaten by leaf hoppers , but I sprayed it with Neem oil and that seems to have discouraged them for now. we are just going into Spring here so mine only has a few bines coming up and it's a new Ryzome .
Hope you get a better answer for your problem from someone with more experience .

Hey, I might be on to something!

What kind of Potassium did you add? If it was potassium chloride,

you might have chlorine toxicity it doesn't typically look quite that toasted, but the bleaching and burning in spots and eventually reaching the cones seems to check out.

 

[willow wolf]

The potassium used was potassium hydroxide, as by product from biodiesel production in glycerol. I routinely use it in composting horse manure, and have not seen any issues in the past years. I'm becoming sceptical about that theory too. the symptoms are evident on multiple plants in multiple locations in varying degrees. This thing is bugging me.
I have spread said compost around these locations also, but I don't know if that's the cause. some plants grown in the same compost are showing no symptoms at all and look very healthy.

I have been looking for tell tale ring shaped chlorosis patterns also but never see any, just yellow spots of varying shades.

It just cant be downy mildew, I have seen so many pics of the symptoms from from the states, it just doesn't look like it or any other fungus(and its not here)

there is no actual damage to the cells, as seen in grape leaves with powdery mildew.

lately I have noticed some cones dying off, the whole stem dies where from it meets the bine all the way to the cone. some bunches have died completely, looks like the sort of thing grey mould would do to strawberries but there is no mould, just wilted and dead cones and stalks. the other cones remain unaffected and look fine.

surely someone somewhere has seen this before, I have looked on the web for days but nothing looks quite like it.

the pic here is another plant in a different spot.

I will post more pics of other plants.

 

[willow wolf]

The potassium used was potassium hydroxide, as by product from biodiesel production in glycerol. I routinely use it in composting horse manure, and have not seen any issues in the past years. I'm becoming sceptical about that theory too. the symptoms are evident on multiple plants in multiple locations in varying degrees. This thing is bugging me.
I have spread said compost around these locations also, but I don't know if that's the cause. some plants grown in the same compost are showing no symptoms at all and look very healthy.

I have been looking for tell tale ring shaped chlorosis patterns also but never see any, just yellow spots of varying shades.

It just cant be downy mildew, I have seen so many pics of the symptoms from from the states, it just doesn't look like it or any other fungus(and its not here)

there is no actual damage to the cells, as seen in grape leaves with powdery mildew.

lately I have noticed some cones dying off, the whole stem dies where from it meets the bine all the way to the cone. some bunches have died completely, looks like the sort of thing grey mould would do to strawberries but there is no mould, just wilted and dead cones and stalks. the other cones remain unaffected and look fine.

surely someone somewhere has seen this before, I have looked on the web for days but nothing looks quite like it.

the pic here is another plant in a different spot.

I will post more pics of other plants.

this stock pic of tomato with fungal infection is the closest i can find

 

[kumah]

When you can, can you post a picture of the top and bottom of the same leaf? Some fungi cause different patterns on the top and bottoms. Also are the dying cones crispy or mushy? If they're mushy, do they have a smell?

If you're applying KOH, it's probably not chlorine toxicity.
The tomato leaf picture is Cladosporiosis, which eventually results in black spots, which isn't what we're seeing in yours.

Chlorosis is just the term plant pathologists use to describe yellowing tissue on plants. What you have on your plants are definitely what I would call chlorotic spots. Bleaching is when the tissue turns white, and necrosis is when the tissue turns brown and crispy. What you have is what we would call chlorotic spots turning necrotic. It also appears to be vein bound (see how some of them are very defined by the veins?). This is pretty common with bacterial pathogens, but not always.

I'm back to being stumped.

I think we can rule these out though:
Not a virus - those are typically well documented and have pretty clear patterns in the leaves. I don't think it'd cause cones to die.
Not a deficiency - Again, pretty clear patterns in the leaves.
Probably not toxicity - I'll keep looking around on this front, but the closest was chlorine toxicity, and if you're not applying KCl, I don't see why there'd be a sudden jump in chlorine.
Downy mildew - unless you're ground zero, it's not a thing in Australia.
Powdery mildew - You'd have seen it
Cladosporiosis - You'd see black spots as well

This could be caused by insects - but that's outside my expertise.