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.

 

[willow wolf]

Ok that's great info.

I think I have another important clue. there is one bine growing into an elderberry tree, Sambuccus nigra, and I noticed that the elderberry had IDENTICAL symptoms on the leaves.

The spring here was record wet. the elderberry also has quite severe Cercospora spots but it doesn't look like the yellow spots on hops

It could also be possible that there is more than one issue happening here , and the yellow spots are not causing the necrosis.

I'll post more pics shortly.

 

[willow wolf]

elderberry leaf, Sambucus nigra, growing with the hops with same symptoms

rear of the leaf, nothing very exiting(?)

hop leaf next to elderberry leaf

its raining today, here the cones are dying, no smell I can detect. this is the bine with the brown necrosis on the leaves.

 

[willow wolf]

Also, this year there was a glut of "Vienna Gold" hops in the plant nurseries this spring. I was like"why are they selling so many of these but no other hops types?"
well I hope some production nursery wasn't trying to get rid of diseased stock....
the one I bought did well but has leaves with slightly different symptoms, I'm not sure if its the same issue or something else. The top pic is of the worst affected leaves, the other one has less severe symptoms

View attachment 816269

 

[kumah]

Also, this year there was a glut of "Vienna Gold" hops in the plant nurseries this spring. I was like"why are they selling so many of these but no other hops types?"
well I hope some production nursery wasn't trying to get rid of diseased stock....
the one I bought did well but has leaves with slightly different symptoms, I'm not sure if its the same issue or something else. The top pic is of the worst affected leaves, the other one has less severe symptomsView attachment 816268View attachment 816269

I think this is either Magnesium or Calcium deficiency.

It could also be a virus, but I don't think it's apple mosaic virus if it is.

Might be worth hitting it with some dolomitic limestone if you have access to that (otherwise, I'm sure there are other mineral amendments. Some key patterns: Magnesium deficiency will appear in the oldest leaves first. It's a mobile element that the plant can cannibalize older tissues for new tissues. Calcium deficiency will be first noticed in the new leaves, and they may be smaller or misshapen before the chlorosis begins.

I'll take a look at your other pictures later today. I think you might be right that there's multiple things happening here.

 

[kumah]

Throughout my day I've been coming back to these pictures and trying to come to a conclusion.

The elderberry having the same pattern is interesting.

Some bacterial infections are smelly, so I was hoping. Some fungal infections either do something different on the other side of the leaf, or are only visible on one side so... neither in this case. Entire sections dying like that near the hops tells me there's either something eating the plant, or a fungus or bacteria that's blocking up xylem. Two things happening at once might be what's throwing me here... you might have an infection and a magnesium deficiency happening at the same time.

If you're comfortable with spraying pesticides, maybe not this year since it's already blooming and nearing harvest (whatever you're able to get out of it), you might spray the area down with a 3-in-1 mix while it's getting re-established just to knock out whatever might be there. There are pre-mixed solutions of Fungicide+Insecticide+X, with X being miticide or a fungicide with a different site of action.

This year or next, add a calcium & magnesium supplement. Dolomitic limestone is good for that. Mind your pH. I don't know that the soil is like down under, but hops can tolerate a pretty high pH anyway... I just wouldn't want to tell you to do something and have your soil become extremely alkaline. Since you already added KOH it probably raised the pH soil a little already.

Water a few times with distilled water too. If you're concerned with potentially too much sodium in the soil... or the off chance that it actually is chlorine poisoning, some flushes with distilled water will help.

 

[faithie999]

I would try an email to some of the commercial hops growers. Also can you contact the agriculture departments of some of your local colleges/universities?

 

[Kent88]

Did you ever figure out what was wrong?

 

[willow wolf]

The short answer is no, though I am now fairly confident its not a virus unless my whole garden suddenly has one
It seems to me that there are 2 main things happening. the yellow spots between veins is one, the browning leaf edges and dissolving leaves is another.

The yellow spots could well be leafhopper damage where they have injected a toxin into the leaves, i have seen it documented and looks slightly similar. or maybe bacteria or fungi that love wet foliage.

The other thing is that the browning off of the cones was quite widespread across multiple plants in my garden. the cones would die from the stalk first, so that the strig(small stem inside the cone) was still alive but wilted, the peduncle, stem from the bine to the cone would die off to brown. no visible sign of any fungal attack, fruiting body, spores odour etc etc. just looked like the bine had made the decision to ditch the cones before they were ready and shut off the stems. as in the previous pic, and the one below- REALLY ODD!

after harvesting the cones, I noticed that many had died prior to harvest in this way, and weren't good anymore, the lupulin had a dull smell to it.
The issue did seem to correspond with cones in areas that had poor light and air circulation, like under foliage, however, many of the plants with affected cones had very little other symptoms like the browning leaves, and very few yellow spots, otherwise very healthy looking. Overall this concerned me as maybe 20% of the entire hops harvest was lost due to the cones having died before they were ready.

So basically I'm still at a loss. Hoping someone with a lot of hop growing experience will recognise the symptoms and chime in.
my personal conclusion is that the cone death may be deficiency related, probably calcium, but also may be due to some stealthy fungal or bacterial organism.

 

[willow wolf]

ok so annoyingly looks like verticillium wilt is in the mix here. on cutting the bines back for winter i could clearly see browning in the sap carrying tissues, but only down close to the rhizome. I remember noticing some tomatoes that were mixed with the hops there wilting during late summer and found their stems tan brown inside with the tell tale symptoms. at this stage I'm hoping its localised to that particular compost heap only. hops will be destroyed there and at this stage I'm planning on soaking the entire pile in an ibc to anaerobically destroy the spores.

I think it may have been the cause of the necrosis on the leaves but the yellow spots id say are another separate issue still unknown to me.