New effective help arrives for the protection against grapevine cicada, drone detection and spraying has begun

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The head of the ministry announced: from Thursday, not only will specialists be looking for the pests that cause the golden yellow color of grapes, but the plantations will also be inspected with drones. The population across the country may encounter drones searching for infected grapes for up to weeks. This will allow the authority to specifically check the plantations potentially affected by the disease, significantly speeding up the identification – he explained.

The pathogen has been confirmed in 17 out of 22 wine regions in Hungary

In the two most heavily infected counties, Somogy County, insecticide control began on Thursday and, depending on the weather, may also be carried out in Zala County – he said. He pointed out that the disease does not pose a threat to humans and does not spread to wine, but it causes extraordinary damage to grapes. There is no known cure for it, and the only way to control it is to take action against the vector that spreads it, the American grapevine cicada. The government is doing everything it can to curb the serious infection affecting grapevines. “We have allocated 3.8 billion forints for this purpose. Farmers and winemakers can count on us” – István Nagy said.

AM/MTI