News Packet from the University of Tennessee's Agricultural Extension Service. It includes news stories, fillers and columns. A table of contents for this week is provided below.
Black shank is a fungus that lives in the soil.
When it infects a tobacco plant, it yellows the leaves, stunts the growth of the plant and can kill it. It gets its name from the blackening of the stalk near the ground. Most often black shank is spread into tobacco fields in one of two ways, Hensley said. The first way is by soil that sticks to the tires of tractors and fertilizer trucks as they move from one field to another. The second way is in irrigation water.