At Winchester, we had 8 hours of wetness observed on last Thursday, then there are several short rains/thunderstorms. Moreover, the night time relative humidity has been fairly high (> 95%) in the past few days. These conditions favors downy mildew development because downy mildew pathogen prefer to produce spores under dark humid conditions.

At this point, you do not need to worry about downy mildew infection on clusters; however, they can still infect leaves. Often time, you will see infection on the top of the canopy around this time of the year because younger leaves are more susceptible than older ones. Once infection gets severe, it can defoliate infected leaves.

As usual, it is much better and easier to have a preventative program than try to play a catch up game. There are many good protective materials for downy mildew, such as Revus products, Zampro, Forum (Please note that these three share the same mode of action), and Ranman. In our small trial, we found that fixed copper worked pretty well against downy mildew when we compared with captan. Captan worked too, but a fixed copper product lasted longer than captan. Some wine makers do not like to see captan or copper used late in the season, so, this time of the season maybe the best timing to use copper and captan for downy mildew. You can also use a phosphorous acid product as well. For some cultivars, you may still use zirum which has a 21-day PHI. Please mix and match to rotate among mode of action groups.