VIRGINIA TREE FRUIT DISEASE UPDATES

In order to better serve the Virginia tree fruit industry and you the growers we strive to visit in 2021 any fruit farm that is experiencing both minor to major tree disease problems. Even if you see a little bit of apple bitter rot, fire blight or brown rot please do not hesitate to contact me, your plant pathologist, via  phone 540 232 6037 or via e-mail acimovic@vt.edu , as we are actively working in the lab at Virginia Tech's Alson H. Smith Jr AREC to isolate the causal pathogens of these diseases in Virginia and build up as large as possible collection of pathogen strains which will allow us to better help and serve you now and in the future. Of particular importance to us is collecting a geographically distant and plant host- & cultivar-diverse collection of strains of the following tree pathogens:  Erwinia amylovora , the fire blight bacterium, Colletotrichum species, the fungi that cause apple and peach bitter rot, Monilinia species, the causal fungi of peach brown ro

First signs of apple bitter rot disease on fruit of apple cultivar ‘Wolf River’ have been found in the Shenandoah Valley, more exactly in Martinsburg WV, Berkeley County ( Fig.1 ). Rot started from the fruit side ( Fig. 1 bottom ) indicating that it probably started as an established quiescent Colletotrichum infection at bloom or petal fall, that then expressed recently. We found that bitter rots were almost always on fruit in dense clusters with many fruit together indicating on the conducive moisture conditions on these clusters and lack of fungicide coverage on fruit penetrating in between the fruit ( Fig. 1 top ). Bitter rot fungi can infect any fungicide-uncovered areas on fruit, especially when warm wetting events occur, and we had severla of these in the last 15 days. Extreme heat and the rain that "came" back this week has and will extremely favor this disease in the weeks preceding harvest. Start scouting for bitter rot symptoms to make sure you are free of th