Blight

Blighted potato plants with a bubble-shaped yellow indicator above them.

Blight is a disease caused by its own Event that infects domesticated plants with a growing period shorter than 15 days. Blighted crops will not grow or yield anything when harvested, and can spread the blight to other nearby plants within 4 tiles while losing health points and dying. Blighted plants can neither be saved, nor healed, nor consumed by herbivore animals, and must be destroyed.

Progression

Blight starts on one species of plant, at 10% severity, affecting 20% of your plants^{[Fact Check]} (1 in 5). It will progress slowly once plants are infected, and once it reaches 28% it can spread to nearby plants within a 4-tile radius.^[Rate?]

Blight jumping from a rice field to a potato crop past a 3 tile gap

Unaffected Plants

Trees, wild, decorative plants, and devilstrand mushrooms are immune to blight.

Removal

To stop the spread of blight and allow replanting, the affected plants must be removed. Blighted plants can be automatically marked for removal en masse by selecting a blighted plant and clicking the "Cut all blight" button, designating all plants currently infected with blight across the map for cutting as if the Cut plants order was used. Note that this only designates the plants that are currently blighted at the time of the order - it will not automatically designate the plants blight spreads to in the meantime. The affected plants can also be manually designated for cutting using the right-click plant cut command, or the Cut plants orders tab of the Architect menu. No matter the designation method, colonists with the Plant cut work enabled will then cut the blighted plants. Consider temporarily setting Plant Cut priority to 1 in the Work tab if colonists do not respond immediately.

If grower time is short, then the plants can also be destroyed by any other means such as by burning them with Molotov cocktails or Incendiary launchers. The fire will spread and rapidly destroy the field, though this risks igniting healthy plants, colony structures, or colonists.

Mitigation strategy

To mitigate the effects of blight, it is recommended to leave 4-square wide strips between crops, left empty or planted with species not affected by blight.

Version history

• Beta 19/1.0 Update - Doubled initial blight size, increase spread rate by 30%.
• 1.4.3523 - Added a "cut all blight" command to blighted plants.