• Many plant diseases attack grasses and food crops in North Carolina.Plant image by Platinum Pictures from Fotolia.com
  
  There are so many diseases that attack grasses, plants, and food crops in North Carolina that they are almost too numerous to mention. Most of these diseases thrive in warm weather, except for brown patch, as well as in high humidity and moisture. If you consider bentgrass, which is a kind of turfgrass, when it becomes either hot or humid, a thin film of copper spot may cover the leaves with a gelatinous coating of spores.
  
  

Brown Patch

• Brown patch can appear on turfgrass.football field. image by Tom Oliveira from Fotolia.com
  
  Brown patch attacks turfgrass. The symptoms vary depending upon mowing height. In certain landscape situations, when the mowing height is over one inch you may see this disease appear as circular patches that are tan, yellow or brown in color, and their diameter can reach anywhere from six inches to several feet. Typically, the affected leaves remain upright, with the appearance of lesions of an irregular shape, tan color and a dark brown border. When the humidity is high or the turfgrass leaves are wet, a gray, cottony growth, known as mycelium, appears among the affected leaves.
  
  

Damping Off

• Golf courses are susceptible to copper spot.golf course image by Earl Robbins from Fotolia.com
  
  Damping off is considered to be a seedling disease; it develops before or just after turfgrass emerges. North Carolina State Centere Turffiles states that if damping off develops after turfgrass seedlings emerge, they appear twisted or flaccid, as if they are suffering from wilt. The seedlings continue to decline and disintegrate until only areas of bare soil are left behind. This disease first develops in only localized spots. However, it will often spread quickly to injure large areas.
  
  

Copper Spot

• Granville wilt can be a menace to North Carolina's tobacco crop.yellow aisle of petals image by M. Elizabeth Huetter from Fotolia.com
  
  A particular disease of the bentgrass species, which is a kind of turfgrass, is copper spot. It usually develops during times of humid and warm weather. You can easily distinguish the copper color in the early morning when due is on the turf. This disease is especially seen on velvet bentgrass but is also observed on creeping bentgrass. People often confuse copper spot with dollar spot, as the diseases produce similar symptoms. As the name suggests, the appearance of copper spot, which is often less than three inches in diameter, is either copper or salmon in color. Copper spot causes a foliar blight, so you will not see any distinct lesions. With high humidity or wet turf, the leaves that are infected display a coating of thin, gelatinous fungal spores.
  
  

Granville Wilt

• North Carolina's tobacco crop is susceptible to various plant diseases.tobacco plants image by OMKAR A.V from Fotolia.com
  
  Granville wilt is one of tobacco's most destructive diseases in North Carolina. This disease causes losses of more than 1 to 2 percent of this state's entire tobacco crop and costs farmers approximately 10 to 15 million dollars a year, reports North Carolina State University's Turffiles. It continues to be a chronic disease problem in eastern North Carolina as well as in the Border Belt. This disease has most recently been spotted in the Old Belt, which makes Granville wilt a problem all over the state.
  
  

Black Shank

• The stem blight fungus infects blueberry patches in North Carolina.Canadian blueberry image by Milan Kincl from Fotolia.com
  
  Of all of North Carolina's tobacco diseases, black shank is the most widespread and destructive. It made its first appearance in the United States in 1915 and made its way to Forsyth County, North Carolina, in 1931. It was then found in Pitt County in 1938. Black shank causes statewide losses of about 1 to 2.5 percent annually. This disease is found in each North Carolina county in which flue-cured tobacco is grown. Blank shank is very prevalent in areas that are poorly-drained and where tobacco was planted the year before. This is one of the diseases that spreads in warm weather when the temperatures range from 84 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. Once black shank infests a field's soil, the farmer cannot get rid of it. Therefore, this disease has to be managed continually each year.
  
  

Stem Blight Fungus

• Stem blight fungus will cause a rapid wilting of blueberry leaves on individual branches, that is usually followed by the whole plant's death. Most infections are traceable to a wound at the infection's initial point. The obvious symptom of the stem blight fungus is known as "flagging." This is a condition in which the recently killed stems do not drop their leaves. This results in a flag which is brown-leafed and is very visible against the healthy, green portions of the blueberry bush. A stem which is infected with the stem blight fungus will have a light brown uniform discoloration in the wood that extends down the stem's infected side. Normally, the stem blight fungus appears in June after the blueberry harvest in southeastern North Carolina. One can observe new infections throughout the summer season.