Recommendations for strawberry disease risk
A field air sampler was used by bacterial diseases expert Jan van der Wolf and her colleagues at Wageningen, UR, in order to collect bacteria for culturing. The sampler showed that the bacteria can travel a few meters through large drops of rain, but as soon as the bacteria enters the air through tiny water particles, they can easily be taken up by the wind.
Due to this, the bacteria can end up as far as 100 meters away from the original source. Van der Wolf has said "At that distance we only found the odd bacterium, but it only requires a few bacteria to infect a plant."
The recommendation is to mow in dry weather and always take the wind direction into account. Placing a hood over the mower to prevent spreading and disinfecting the machine during or after use was also recommended. This method can be used with generally any crop, such as potatoes, where bacteria is released when the leaves are destroyed.