We are thrilled to announce Fritz Westover as the 2024 Sustainable Ag Expo Headline Speaker. Fritz brings more than two decades of hands-on viticulture experience. He's dedicated to making knowledge accessible and understandable for every grower. Once on the team, always on the team! Fritz was the Technical Program Coordinator at Vineyard Team from 2013-2015, and we are excited to collaborate with him yet again. Don't miss his sessions: Welcome Event at Center of Effort Winery Nov 11, 5:00-6:00 pm | Dormant Grapevine Pruning & Vine Training: Are we Slowly Killing our Vines?   Trade Show & Seminars at Madonna Inn Expo Center Nov. 12, 8:00-9:00 am | Vine Pruning & Training Practices to Promote Vineyard Longevity & Better Disease Management Nov. 12, 9:00-10:00 am | Grower Panel: Practical Approaches for Adapting Optimal Pruning to Match Wine Styles and Changing Markets GET TICKETS When you attend the Sustainab

The recent rain we’ve been getting is certainly a welcome change. Wet weather does, however, present other challenges especially going into the pruning season. That’s right. I’m talking about trunk disease. It’s everywhere, and like viruses, growers like to pretend they don’t have it. After all, it takes years before symptoms express themselves and even longer before they amount to an economic loss. But economic loss from trunk disease is real and, uh, expensive. No one likes being told their best option is tearing out and replanting a vineyard, so let’s go over some ways to be proactive. We’re all stuck in the office right now anyway. Sometimes there are more than one pathogen present in the vascular tissue. This vine shows the classic wedge-shaped canker typical of Eutypa, but also has some spotty necrotic tissue associated with an Esca infection. What is trunk disease? Trunk disease is a catch all term that refers to fungal diseases Eutypa,