Posted at 1:17 p.m. EDT Wednesday, April 14, 1999

Tropical breezes bring plant-killing spores from Cuba

ALBANY, Georgia -- (AP) -- Cuban imports are ruining the business of some Southern tobacco farmers, but don't blame Fidel Castro.

The wind, not Cuba's leader, is responsible for these imports: killer spores that are damaging the tobacco crop in southern Georgia and northern Florida this year.

The spores also are plaguing tobacco plants as far north as Canada and as far west as Kentucky, as well as tobacco farmers in Cuba.

The tiny invaders known as sporangiospores cause a disease called blue mold, and they have cost Kentucky burley tobacco growers an estimated dlrs 300 million since 1995.

Blue mold losses this year have forced some Georgia growers to replant their fields, said Rick Moss, a Colquitt County farmer.

``There are billions and billions of spores that blow in here from the Caribbean,'' he said.

Infected plants often die, or fail to produce normal yields. But with effective fungicides and proper weather conditions, they can recover.

Released by tobacco plants, the spores can spread quickly through greenhouses and plant beds during their 72-hour lifespan. Initially, they attacked only the tender tobacco plants grown in covered plant beds or greenhouses during the winter and moved to the fields in the spring. Blue mold could not survive hot, summer weather.

That changed about 1979, with the arrival of a heat-tolerant strain that caused a dlrs 250-million loss in the United States and a dlrs 100-million loss in Canada. The disease changed again in the early 1990s, becoming resistant to the pesticide Ridomil, which had been the most effective defense against it.

This year, Georgia Commissioner of Agriculture Tommy Irvin approved the use of fungicide Acrobat MZ on a temporary basis. Acrobat -- which protects healthy plants, but does not cure diseased plants -- costs between dlrs 20 and dlrs 30 per acre and has to be applied every five to seven days.

``It could be an economic disaster if we have to spray ... every five days from now until August,'' Moss said. ``Even if we control it, it could dramatically drive up our cost of production. We're hoping we can make one or two applications and have a normal crop.''

Blown in from Latin America and the Caribbean, where tobacco is a winter crop, the spores invade Florida, Georgia and Texas first and then spread farther north.

The problem is more serious than usual this year because blue mold was discovered in March, a month early, said Charles E. Main, leader of the school's North American Blue Mold Forecast Center.

``When that happens it gives the disease more time to go farther and cause more damage,'' he said.

The center provides three forecasts a week from March through September to give growers an early warning. If growers spray fungicides before the spores arrive, they can minimize losses.

Some of the latest forecasts show the spores traveling from western Cuba to the Florida Panhandle, from Statenville and Moultrie, Georgia, into South Carolina and from Mexico into Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas.

If Georgia and Florida growers don't attack blue mold aggressively, it intensifies problems farther north, possibly moving the disease through Pennsylvania, Missouri, Wisconsin, Ohio, Connecticut, Massachusetts and, ultimately, Canada.