Pest and disease control for cut flowers
Case 1 A wet week in the greenhouse - 1
Start from the Crop Protection button Pick the plot, then tap Crop Protection. ORTH offers questions such as a disease prevention plan from this week’s weather, a check before harvest and export, or the next spray rotation from your last 60 days. Tap one to ask it. For cut flowers On the savanna, cold nights and humid days bring condensation inside the greenhouse. Wet petals, buds and cut stubs are where Botrytis starts, and young post-cut shoots are where downy mildew starts. - 2
Ask for a plan built on the forecast We tapped Build a disease prevention plan using this week’s weather. ORTH proposed 8 actions from 5 to 11 November against Botrytis and downy mildew in the wettest, most humid days, with scouting for powdery mildew as the Freedom shoots start to elongate. It starts on 5 November: take old petals, leaves and damaged tissue out in closed bags, scout buds, petals, young leaves, stems and cut stubs, and mark every finding by bed, with a photo of the fixed hot spots. - 3
Keep the canopy dry every day From 5 to 11 November ORTH planned a daily drying routine: open the vents early enough to clear the night’s condensation, keep air moving through the lower canopy, and go into the night with dry leaves and flowers, without late washing or misting. On 6 November check roof and gutter leaks, splash points, blocked drains and emitters that wet the foliage. Keep the drip in the root zone and do not irrigate into the late afternoon. Fix leaks straight away, because rain is expected outside every day. - 4
No product until it is cleared ORTH scheduled no fungicide. On 9 November it set a label check: before any preventive or curative fungicide, choose only a product with a current ICA-registered label for rose and the confirmed target. Before you schedule it, record the trade name, active ingredient, FRAC group, label rate, re-entry interval, maximum applications, interval between applications and whether it suits stems for the US and EU, and check the fungicides of the last 60 days so you do not repeat the same mode of action. - 5
Save the proposal as actions When ORTH proposes a plan, tap Review to see every action with its date, category and instructions. Change or add actions if you need to, then tap Create. The actions land in the plot’s plans, ready to assign to someone on your team. For cut flowers On Lote 1 this saved the disease prevention plan with 8 actions, from sanitation on 5 November to a weekly review on 11 November. Case 2 Thrips and mites in a flush for export - 6
Treat it as an export decision We reported thrips damage on some buds and the first two-spotted spider mites, in a flush for the United States. ORTH said not to make a blanket cleanup spray and to treat it as an export-release problem. Old scars alone do not justify a spray: tap buds over a white tray and check leaf undersides to confirm live thrips and mites, and map the hotspots by bed. Bag badly scarred buds and heavily colonised leaves, work clean beds first, remove flowering weeds, and keep these early buds as a separate, traceable lot. - 7
Biological control first Do not wet the buds to slow the mites, because that raises the Botrytis risk in a humid week, and avoid dust and water stress, which favour mites. Ask a registered Colombian supplier for a predatory-mite programme for greenhouse roses that covers thrips and Tetranychus urticae, released in the hotspots and the beds around them. Give the supplier your recent spray history first, because some residues stop predators from establishing, and a broad-spectrum spray would kill them and bring the mites back. - 8
What to confirm before any product ORTH set four gates before any insecticide or miticide: the Colombian registration for rose or ornamentals, the pest, greenhouse use and the method in the ICA register; the label rate, interval, maximum applications, re-entry interval, PPE and any cutting interval, never assuming a missing interval is zero; the IRAC group against the last 60 days; and written approval under the US buyer’s protocol, because a food-crop residue table does not prove a treatment is accepted on cut flowers. With no verified product it named no chemical or rate. Rain and 84 to 88% humidity last until 7 November, and 9 to 10 November is only a possible window, if the greenhouse shows the canopy dries quickly. - 9
Inspect before bunching and boxing For the packhouse, ORTH set no live pests in the inspected lot as the release rule. That is an internal standard of the farm, and the buyer’s sampling plan sets how many stems to check. Inspect every traceable lot before bunching and again before boxing: tap flowers over a white tray, open some buds, check leaf undersides for mites, eggs and webbing, and grade out scarred flowers even without live thrips. Keep the plot, bed, harvest date and treatment record with each lot. One live pest means you hold the lot, keep it apart from clean lots and trace it back to its bed.
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