Fruit and Vegetable News

Annalisa Hultberg, Extension Educator, food safety On May 6th the  U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a final rule on agricultural water  for pre-harvest water in the FSMA Produce Safety Rule. To see the full announcement and language of the rule, go to the FDA website.  First, remember that the Produce Safety Rule only applies to some fruit and vegetable farms, but the rule provides guidance on how to ensure the production of safe produce for all growers.  To determine your status under the PSR, see this website. Second, the rules about agricultural water only apply to water that is being used on covered commodities and that is likely or intended to touch the harvestable portion of the crop or food contact surfaces.  As a reminder, water is broken into both pre and postharvest water for the purposes of the FSMA Rule. What is different in the revised version of the FSMA Rule on Agricultural Water? Definition: Pre-harvest water is water used prior ...

Marissa Schuh, IPM Extension Educator As soil starts to warm and vegetables get in the ground, complaints about cutworms often follow. Minnesota is home to a few species of cutworms, some of which we can track and predict, and others we can’t. Regardless of the species, we have limited management options once we start to see damage. A cutworm we can track: black cutworm The most frequently destructive cutworm we see in Minnesota doesn’t spend the winters here.  Black cutworms only survive the winter in southern states, and fly up to Minnesota using weather fronts.  University of Minnesota uses pheromone traps to track when and where black cutworms are being deposited into Minnesota.  Depending on how many are caught, we can make predictions about how large the population might be and figure out when we should scout for damage. If you are farming in one of the counties in the below table, be on the lookout for cutworms, as there was a lot of black cutworm moths trapped in...