Northern New York growers whose alfalfa crops are slow to emerge this spring may need to check fields for brown root rot.

BRR causes lesions on the tap roots and crowns of alfalfa and other perennial forage legumes. Disease symptoms develop in late winter and early spring. Severely affected plants often fail to emerge from winter dormancy or exhibit delayed spring regrowth.

The farmer-driven Northern New York Agricultural Development Program has provided funding to continue research into the crop disease that can cause alfalfa and perennial forage crop losses in excess of 60 percent.

Earlier Northern New York Agricultural Development Program-funded research surveyed alfalfa production fields in the northern New York region and identified a complex of seven varieties of the fungus Phoma sclerotioides that causes brown root rot. Research in northern New York farm fields has shown as many as five of the seven biotypes, sometimes five in a single field.

The Northern New York Agricultural Development Program (NNYADP) has designated 2011 project funding from the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station for the selective breeding and field trials of BRR-resistant alfalfa varieties

More information on NNY brown root rot research is posted under Grass-based Agriculture on the Northern New York Agricultural Development Program web site at www.nnyagdev.org.

More info and help is available from Cooperative Extension of St. Lawrence County’s Stephen Canner at 379-9192.