Blue Mold Takes Toll On Kentucky Tobacco

Source from:  By BRUCE SCHREINER The Associated Press LOUISVILLE, Ky. 08/19/2004

Ricci Roland says his mature burley tobacco appears to have been pelted by hail, but the holes in some of his leaf were caused by an unseen force -- blue mold spores. The fast-spreading fungal disease creates yellow blotches on tobacco leaves, which then turn brown and fall off. Roland, who farms in Harrison County in north-central Kentucky, has spent the entire season doing battle with it. Despite repeated spraying, Roland said he expects blue mold to reduce yields from his crop -- now being cut and put in the barn to cure -- by 200 to 400 pounds an acre. "If you were to look at it hanging in the barn, you would think we had a hailstorm," Roland said in a phone interview. Statewide, blue mold had been reported in 88 of Kentucky's 120 counties and could lower burley production by 10 percent, said University of Kentucky tobacco specialist Gary Palmer. The unusually cool, wet summer created "just ideal conditions for blue mold," Palmer said. Kentucky growers, who lead the nation in burley production, are expected to produce 204.8 million pounds, or 95 percent of the effective quota of 216.4 million pounds, a crop-reporting service predicted. Just more than a third of the state's tobacco was rated fair or poor by the Kentucky Agricultural Statistics Service in its latest weekly report. Half the crop was considered good and 16 percent excellent. Nearly one-fourth of the crop has been cut, well ahead of last year, when 6 percent had been cut at this time. Some regions have escaped the blue mold outbreak. "I'm knocking on wood as I tell you this: We've got a tremendous crop here," said Gary Tilghman, the agriculture extension agent in Barren County in south-central Kentucky, a leading burley producer. Tilghman said blue mold didn't appear in Barren County until late in the growing season and was isolated. Some neighboring counties were hit harder, he said. Palmer said counties in the central bluegrass region were among the hardest hit. In the most severe cases, blue mold infected plant stems. In those fields, some plants "are just falling over because the stem is weakened where that infection occurred," Palmer said. In Harrison County, the crop looks to be about average, though blue mold will cut into yields, extension agent Gary Carter said. "We've got some exceptionally good tobacco and some exceptionally bad tobacco," he said. Much of the crop rebounded from early infestation, Carter said. Upper parts of the stalk, which bears the leaf that fetches the highest prices from tobacco companies, weren't as badly affected by the disease, he said. "If you'd asked me when tobacco was knee high, I would say it's the worst damage I've ever seen in my life," Carter said. "For some reason, at a certain point this tobacco seemed to take off." Enditem