Looking for answers

Last week one of our grape producers called me and said he noticed some of his Shiraz vines are just dying. I went to have a look. Some vines that were perfectly healthy last year just died. They were even pruned this year.

This is truly a odd situation, as it is individual vines dying, and at no specific pattern. So I had him dig me some sampling holes so I could see what the roots looked like and I wanted to sample for Nematodes and Phytophthora.

When I got into the holes I was shocked to see hardly any roots structure left is some of the sampling holes. You could clearly see that it was eaten, but then again, in two of the holes I smelled anaerobic symptoms and the soil colour proved it. Only one vine had visual damage within the main stem.


So the samples has been sent away for examination and I will update on the situation when I figured out whats going on.