Bacteria cannot be controlled directly. Severe adequate cultivation and hygiene measures must be taken, especially against Erwinia during the darker winter months and against Acidovorax in high temperatures in the summer to prevent infections spreading.
Water is the most common source of spreading bacterioses on plant populations. The plants must be watered carefully, keeping the leaves as dry as possible, the plants should not be placed too close to each other.
Wounds are open doors for bacterioses and must be avoided.
All plants with visible symptoms must be removed from the greenhouse immediately and destroyed. Cutting off individual infected leaves hardly improves the situation and only slows down the course of the disease. In the case of an infection in young thinned out plants, the whole box should be removed.
Stress situations such as marked temperature or light changes or increased nitrogen fertilisation have to be avoided at all costs.
Cultures should be cultivated as regular as possible.
Hygiene must have top priority for all cultivation: washing your hands, changing or disinfecting work materials.
Cultivation vessels, shelves, greenhouse desks and tools that were in contact with infected plants or water must be disinfected.
In order to decrease spreading of the intruder in the stand, regular and repeated prophylactic spraying with copper-containing products can be done. Copper hydroxide or copperoxichloride crystals have the effect of mechanical barriers on the plant surface. However, treatment with copper over a longer period might result in phytotoxity on leaves and air roots.
Common benzoic acid can also be used for disinfection in gardening when carefully poured over the plants, however, this product may not reach the roots. Most other disinfectants are phytotoxic and are not suitable for direct contact with living plants.
New tests and experience from practice show that the use of chloride dioxide seems to be efficient. As an oxidating agent, it takes effect on the organic parts of the water. In concentrations of 2 ppm, chloride dioxide can be mixed with the water for watering.
