Drop of white the right stuff for vines

Monday, 2 September 2002

MILK and other dairy products can be as effective as some conventional fungicides in controlling powdery mildew in vineyards, according to a University of 新浪彩票 researcher.

Peter Crisp from the University's Department of Applied and Molecular Ecology is examining novel control methods for powdery mildew for his PhD, and has already attracted interest from the wine industry with his preliminary findings. Powdery mildew is a disease which attacks grapevine leaves and fruit, and currently costs the Australian wine industry about $30 million a year, mainly in control measures.

"A lot of people are already using milk on their household potplants to make the leaves shiny - but now its benefits are being formally recognised," Mr Crisp says. "For the first part of my study, I examined 30 or 40 different treatments, some of them "snake oils" or "old wives' tales", that are in circulation for treating powdery mildew. Unsurprisingly, most of them did not provide good control, but milk and whey, and also a canola oil-based product, stood out as being comparable to current powdery mildew treatments."

The most successful treatments Mr Crisp has trialled so far are milk and whey (the liquid waste from cheese production). The milk is diluted to 1/10th of its normal strength, and the whey 1/3rd, and the solutions sprayed onto the grapevine leaves and immature grape