Fire Blight Problems

Fire Blight Problems. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Tree fruit producers in the state have been busy trying to stave off a problem with fire blight. Tim Smith with WSU Chelan County discusses the problem.

SMITH: Well if you remember back in April we had some summer which was a nice memory but the warm weather happen to occur right about the same time that we were blooming in apples in the southern part of the state. And that coincided with the potential of increasing fireblight infection.

Fireblight is a bacterial infection that enters the fruit through the flowers and then travels from the fruit to the wood eventually killing the tree.

SMITH: And that really warm weather we had about the 23rd or 24th of April was followed by region wide rain which created probably to my memory the worse fire blight infection potential that we’ve ever had in the fruit industry in this state. We’ve had worse infections locally but nothing that was quite as widespread as this potential.

Smith says the only way to negate the damage is to cut out the infection.

SMITH: THis was all occurring at the time when the growers were trying to do blossom thinning for fruit load reduction on the heavily flowing apple trees and there was quite a bit of effort to do both blossom thinning and the fire blight protection. It was quite a rush there because this all had to occur in just a matter of a few days on many thousands of acres.

Tomorrow we’ll talk more with Tim Smith about the damage done to the apples and pear crops as well.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.