Strawberry production in the province this season will be complicated because autumn and winter were too rainy, humid and had many cloudy days. The rains in early fall saturated the soil and prevented producers from preparing them properly, which delayed plantings up to a month. Daniel Kirschbaum, a specialist in strawberries from the Fruit-horticulture Division of the INTA Famaillá, said the economic success of strawberry crops in the province depended mainly on the early production. "Planting later implies losing a large portion of this production, which runs from May to August, and that has prices that decrease as we approach spring," he said. As a result of the rains, he said, there have been many cases of quality and health issues in the seedlings. "Since it has been a wet year, many plants were lost because of pathogenic fungi living in the soil. The rains caused direct damage to the fruits of the plants in harvest and created predisposing conditions for botrytis, a devastating fungus that attacks the fruit in very wet and cold periods. In late August, the weather was getting drier, warm and bright, which is good for the plant, but also for the spider mite, the strawberry's biggest pest. There already are numerous pockets of this mite in local plantations," he said. Kirschbaum said that the area devoted to strawberry in the province this year had stabilized at 310 hectares. "The main factors limiting the expansion of the crop are the high production costs, the uncertainty of obtaining early varieties because of climate issues, high freight rates, low fruit industry prices, and falling exports. However, the situation is more favorable for small-scale farmers and diversified family farmers who have family labor and sell in the area and in Mercofrut. However, the surface and strawberry volumes handled in Tucuman are very low," he stated. Source - http://www.freshplaza.com