More On Fire Blight

More On Fire Blight

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

Fire blight is a destructive bacterial disease of apples and pears that kills blossoms, shoots, limbs, and, sometimes, entire trees. Recently weather conditions were perfect for the disease to take hold and according to Tim Smith, Extension Educator with WSU Chelan County Extension apples weren’t the only thing affected.

SMITH: Well the word is starting to trickle in that there was some serious damage or at least widespread damage in fire blight showing up in apple orchards. People have been cutting it for the last 2 or 3 weeks. If you remember the weird spring we’ve had, we also had a blast of warm weather in the middle of May so that particular time it caught the pears blooming in the latter part of the state pear bloom regions and there was some infection that occurred.

Usually warm weather followed by a rain will heighten your chances for infection but Smith says this was a bit different.

SMITH: Wherever dew formed on the flowers to provide the wetness because that period wasn’t really followed by a system-wide or area-wide rainfall so that damage is much more scattered and not nearly so serious except in a few orchards. Some growers were more successful than others at preventing the problem. The disease never shows up industry-wide.

Orchardists have to literally cut the infection out of the trees by using aggressive pruning.

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

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