Summer rots continue to rear their ugly heads (Fig. 1). This year, we are even seeing them on late season apples like Evercrisp (Fig 2) and GoldRush.
On the plus side, we are seeing some level of control with all fungicides in our trials (data will be presented at the Indiana Hort Congress); unfortunately, on highly susceptible varieties like Honeycrisp, we need to do more research to figure out how to better control these pathogens. Treatments that provided reasonable control in Golden Delicious suffered 10 times more infections on Honeycrisp. Future research will examine the role of timing and fungicide choice on infection.
As always, please contact me if you are seeing new problems, increasing severity of problems, or you can surprise me and tell me what a great year you had! As you can see, Jojen loved the harvest, and has decided like most children, that Honeycrisp and Evercrisp are his favorite apples, followed by Golden Delicious (Fig. 3).
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- Fig 1 White rot (left) and bitter rot (right)
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- Fig 3 Jojen gives his approval but really wanted Honeycrisp, instead
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- Fig 2 Evercrisp, sack of apple sauce, compliments of white rot
