Infected plants will often break at the upper part of the crown when lifted from the soil. The crown, when cut lengthwise, appears brown or sometimes rose pink throughout. Crown tissue will disintegrate with time. Belowground symptoms do not appear until the aboveground plant parts are dead. Plants may recover from the disease but are usually stunted.
Symptoms are most common between flowering and harvest when plants are under stress.
Warm, wet conditions in poorly drained soils favor infection. Disease and symptom development is favored by high temperatures and low moisture conditions, factors that apparently stress the plant prior to harvest. Control of crown rot involves fumigating, planting resistant varieties, providing adequate soil drainage through raised beds, and avoiding low, wet fields or fields with a history of crown rot. Nematodes are microscopic roundworms that attack plant roots. Root-knot nematodes, Meloidogyne spp., cause the most damage in Alabama but others, such as the root lesion nematode, Pratylenchus spp., can also be troublesome on strawberries.