Brown rot of stone fruit: cause, symptoms and control
Three hours of wetness at 24 C infect the blossom. Latent infections decide the harvest months in advance, and 156 products are only 26 active substances.
Crops
Apricot (16)
Diseases (3)
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.
Pests (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.
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.
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.