Cherry leaf spot (Blumeriella jaapii): diagnosis, cycle and timing
Ascospore release starts at petal fall and lasts six to eight weeks. Five hours of wetness at 17-20 C are enough. Why the programme does not begin after harvest.
Technical articles
Articles — page 4
Spotted wing drosophila (Drosophila suzukii) in cherries
The serrated ovipositor that lets it attack sound fruit, up to 13 generations a year and 300 eggs per female, why males go sterile at 30 °C, and why traps detect but never control.
Reducing rain cracking in sweet cherry
Cracking is three different disorders, not one, and the classical burst-balloon model is wrong. What the cuticle, the pedicel and the timing of calcium actually do.
Bacterial canker of stone fruit, Pseudomonas syringae
The bacterium that manufactures the frost wounds it then invades through. The knife test that separates infectious from non-infectious gummosis, the nematode complex, why copper hydroxide works and copper oxide does not, and the entry point most often missed in young trees.
European Stone Fruit Yellows: the phytoplasma of stone fruit
What phytoplasmas are, the ten symptoms they cause, and why 'Candidatus Phytoplasma prunorum' cannot be cured — only kept out with clean planting material.
Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterium that threatens tree fruit growing as a whole
The bacterium that destroyed the olive groves of the Salento: how the biofilm kills the tree by thirst, why the nymph of the vector is the only accessible target, why there is no cure, and the two resistant olive cultivars that are now the one hopeful development.
The brown marmorated stink bug, BMSB, Halyomorpha halys
Two overlapping generations a year, 538 degree-days from egg to adult, and a chemical toolbox that keeps shrinking. Greek monitoring data from Imathia and Pieria, the native egg parasitoids already at work, and where the samurai wasp stands today.
The persimmon cultivar Rojo Brillante
The Spanish cultivar that redrew the world map of persimmon — and the one that cannot be sold crisp without a CO₂ deastringency chamber. Astringency group, harvest, the 8 °C limit, and circular leaf spot.
Why sweet cherries fail to set fruit
Self-incompatibility, an unsuitable polleniser, bad weather at bloom, too few bees, frost and wrong planting distances — the six reasons a cherry orchard produces nothing.
Cossus cossus, the goat moth that hollows out fruit trees
Biology, the two-year life cycle and seven practical measures against the largest wood-boring insect of Greek orchards — including the nematode option.
Capnodis tenebrionis, the flat-headed root borer of stone fruit
It lays only in dry soil, its eggs do not hatch in moist soil, and its larvae drown in the gum of vigorous trees. Why irrigation is the principal control method, not just good practice.
Pests and diseases of kiwifruit (upd. 03/09/2026)
Copper resistance documented in all 22 canker strains from Pella, a vine decline caused by Phytopythium on waterlogged soil rather than Phytophthora, botrytis decided at flowering five months before it shows, and stink bug damage visible only when the fruit is cut. With a field differential-diagnosis table and a monitoring calendar.