- Author: Ben Faber
Stem and leaf blights are symptoms that appear for various reasons – high rainfall or humidity, spray burn, chewing insect infestation. Here in California we can add other causes, such as drought and salinity burn. These conditions can cause wounding of leaf and stems allowing entry of fungal spores that can cause leaf and stem dieback. This condition is most common near the coast where weather conditions can change from mild and low temperatures to extremely high temperature with winds, such as the Santa Anas or the Sundowners in Santa Barbara. Leaves suddenly dry out, causing cracking either at that time or when they are rehydrated with irrigation. This allows spore entry into the wounds and permits the pathogen to grow in the dead tissue. Symptoms appear 7 – 10 days after the stress. These are decay fungi that create these spores and they are the ones that cause decay of dead tissue on the ground. So their spores are everywhere.
The greater part of a tree is dead – the woody part of the branches and trunk. And it is dead tissue that these fungi are feeding on. Most trees will limit the growth of the fungus by sealing off the infection with gums of various sorts. In that case, the disease is limited and you may only see a leaf or small branch dying back. In mature trees it is possible to see a small branch here and there that has died back, but the bulk of the canopy is still green. It has been called “salt and pepper syndrome”, because of that speckled appearance. In the case of young trees with their smaller root systems and a lesser ability to seal of the disease process, a whole tree can die.
Since this is a severe water stress or salt stress induced problem, the most important management issue is to watch the weather forecasts predicting unusual hot, dry weather and make sure the trees are adequately irrigated going into the stressful period. Shallow rooted trees like avocados are more prone to dry out rapidly in these high water demand situations, but it can be occur in other trees (citrus, apple, peach) and shrubs if the weather conditions are severe enough. With poor leaching due to low rainfall, this can be more of a problem
The only solution to the symptoms is to cut out the diseased parts to prevent its further spread. Once the disease starts spreading, the fungus can produce copious amounts of spores, which in the case of avocado can cause cankers and rots on the fruit.
Figure. In the case of young trees, the whole tree may die from blight.
- Author: Ben Faber
Here's a list of links for growers and homeowners on how to prepare for fire and in the case of fruit trees, how to treat them after they have burned and how to calculate the loss of a commercial fruit tree.
Tree and Vine Loss Calculators
Spread sheets to help you calculate loss
Calculate Cost of Fire Damage to Avocado and Citrus Trees
Information from Ben Faber, Soils and Water, Avocado and Minor Subtropicals Advisor
Information on how to care for fire damaged trees from Ben Faber, Soils and Water, Avocado and Minor Subtropicals Advisor
Information on fire ecology and fire safe landscaping for homeowners, developed by Sabrina Drill, Natural Resources Advisor
UC Center for Fire Research and Outreach
Information on fire science from UC experts. Includes information on how to make homes and other structures more fire resistant, developed by Steve Quarles, Statewide Wood Performance and Durability Advisor
Local Fire Departments - have regulatory information you may need
Ventura County
City of Ventura
City of Oxnard
City of Fillmore
City of Santa Paula
Santa Barbara County
City of Lompoc
City of Santa Barbara
City of Santa Maria
Publications Available From University of California ANR Catalog
You can find the publications listed below at theUniversity of California DANR Catalog site (In the ANR Search type fire) and order more than one publication at a time or you may click on one of the links below.if you purchase a priced publication enter the promotion code PRVEN56 at check-out. You'll receive a 10% discount on your order, and a portion of the sales will benefit local programs.
A Property Owner's Guide to Reducing Wildfire Threat - describes ways homeowners can reduce the threat of fire to their property. Cost $1.50
Home Landscaping for Fire - Incorporating fire safe concepts into your landscape is one of the most important ways you can help your home survive a wildfire. FREE
Landscaping Tips to Help Defend Your Home from Wildfire - You can have both a beautiful landscape and a defensible fire-safe zone. FREE
Recovering from Wildfire - discusses issues that family forest landowners should consider following a wildfire. Cost $5.00
WildFire: How Can We Live With It? (DVD) - This program contains general information about wildland fire in California. Cost $20.00
Companion Set: How Can We Live with Wildland Fire? (Publication and DVD) - What role does fire play in the natural cycle and what choices can we make about coping with wildland fire? Cost $27.50
How Can We Live with Wildland Fire? - What role does fire play in the natural cycle and what choices can we make about coping with wildland fire? Cost $10.00
/span>- Author: Gary Bender
- Author: David Shaw
OK! Let's Strategize. There are four steps for everybody to consider, it doesn't matter if you have a backyard lawn and landscape or if you have 700 acres of avocados.
1. Maintenance: Irrigation System and Cultural Practices
2. Improve Irrigation Scheduling
3. Deficit Irrigation
4. Reduce Irrigated Area
1. Maintenace
a. Irrigation System.
- Fix leaks. Unfortunately, there are almost always leaks for all kinds of reasons. Pickers step on sprinklers, squirrels eat through polytube, branches drop on valves, coyote puppies like to chew….the system should be checked during every irrigation
- Drain the lines. At the beginning of each year every lateral line should be opened in order to drain the fine silt that builds up.
- Maintain or increase the uniformity of irrigation so that each tree or each area gets about the same amount of water. Common problems include different sized sprinklers on the same line or pressure differences in the lines. Where there are elevation changes, every line should have a pressure regulator, they come pre-set to 30 psi. Having all of your lines set up with pressure regulators is the only way you can get an even distribution of water to all of the trees, and it solves the problem of too much pressure at the bottom of the grove and not enough at the top.
- Clean the filters often. You don't have a filter because you think that the district water has already been filtered? Hah! What happens if there is a break in the line in the street and the line fills with dirt during the repairs? All of your sprinklers will soon be filled with dirt.
- Is water flow being reduced at the end of the lateral line? It could be because scaffold roots are growing old enough to pinch off the buried line. The only cure is to replace the line.
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b. Cultural Management.
- Control the weeds because weeds can use a lot of water.
- Mulch? Mulching is good for increasing biological activity in the soil and reducing stress on the trees, but the mulch will not save a lot of water if you are irrigating often….the large evaporative surface in mulches causes a lot of water to evaporate if the mulch surface is kept wet through frequent irrigation. Mulches are more helpful in reducing water use if the trees are young and a lot of soil is exposed to direct sunlight.
2. Improve the Irrigation Scheduling.
- CIMIS will calculate the amount of water to apply in your grove based on last week’s water evapotranspiration (ET). You can get to CIMIS by using several methods; for avocado growers the best method is to use the irrigation calculator on the www.avocado.org website. If you need further instruction on this, you can call our office and ask for the Avocado Irrigation Calculator Step by Step paper. You need to know the application rater of your mini-sprinklers and the distribution uniformity of your grove’s irrigation system.
- CIMIS tells you how much water to apply, but you need tensiometers, soil probes or shovels to tell you when to water.
- “Smart Controllers” have been used successfully in landscape and we have used one very successfully in an avocado irrigation trial The one we used allowed us to enter the crop coefficient for avocado into the device, and daily ET information would come in via a cell phone connection. When the required ET (multiplied automatically by the crop coefficient) reached the critical level, the irrigation system would come on, and then shut down when the required amount had been applied. Increased precision can be obtained by fine tuning these devices with the irrigation system precipitation (application) rate.
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3. Deficit Irrigation.
- Deficit irrigation is the practice of applying less water than the ET of the crop or plant materials. Deficit irrigation is useful for conserving water in woody landscape ornamentals and drought tolerant plants where crop yield is not an issue. Water conserved in these areas may be re-allocated to other areas on the farm or landscape.
- There hasn’t been enough research on deficit irrigation of avocado for us to comment. We suspect, however, that deficit irrigation will simply lead to dropped fruit and reduced yield.
- Stumping the avocado tree could be considered a form of deficit irrigation. In this case, the tree should be stumped in the spring, painted with white water-based paint to reflect heat, and the sprinkler can be capped for at least 2 months. As the tree starts to re-grow, some water should be added back, probably about 10-20% of the normal water use of a mature tree.
- Regulated Deficit Irrigation for Citrus is an important method for saving water, and in some cases will reduce puff and crease of the peel. In one orange trial done by Dr. David Goldhammer in the San Joaquin Valley, an application of 25% of ETc from mid-May to Mid July saved about 25% of applied water for the year and reduced crease by 67%, without appreciably reducing yield.
- 4.
- 3. Reduce Irrigated Area.
- Taking trees out of production. Trees that are chronically diseased and do not produce fruit (or the fruit is poor quality) should be taken out of production during this period. Also consider: trees in frosty areas, trees in wind-blown areas, trees near eucalyptus and other large trees that steal the water from the fruit trees.
- Changing crops. You may want to take out those Valencias during this period and replant to something that brings in more money, like seedless, easy-peeling mandarins. The young trees will be using a lot less water.
- Fallow Opportunities. You may decide to do some soil preparation, tillage or cultivation, or even soil solarization of non-irrigated areas.
We have found that this four step process is a logical way to achieve water cutbacks with least impact. It is possible to achieve a ten percent reduction in water by only improving irrigation system uniformity and scheduling procedures. Often, these two measures also result in better crop performance and reduced runoff. Reducing irrigated area or taking areas out of production should be a last resort and a well thought out decision. Plan for the future, hopefully water will be more available in future years.
- Author: Mary Lu Arpaia
- Author: David Obenland
Over the last two weeks Mary Lu Arpaia (Extension Specialist, UC Riverside) and David Obenland (Plant Physiologist, USDA-ARS) had the opportunity to visit Israel and spend several days looking at avocados including a visit with Zvi Mendel and Stanley Freeman, the lead researchers in Israel on the Polyphagous Shot Hole Borer (PSHB) and its Fusarium fungal symbiont. This is their report.
So far the beetle is still largely confined to the central coastal region of Israel and the northern Negev. The beetle has also been found in the Upper Galilee at Kibbutz Hagoshrim in avocado and on ornamental trees in other locations in this region which is quite far from the primary infested area. The infested avocado trees have been destroyed but the beetle population already spread outside of the site of the initial infestation. Interestingly, this find was with a grower who packs their avocados in the coastal area. It is assumed that the beetles arrived in the bins originating from the infested area. This is a reminder to California growers and packers that to minimize the spread of pests clean bins are essential. The spread of avocado thrips and persea mite in California is also assumed to have been by bins containing vegetative material.
The Israeli researchers have continued searching for materials that will either control the beetle or the fungus. They have had reasonable success in the lab when they test materials under controlled conditions but application out in the field is not effective. There are no chemical treatments on the horizon that growers can use.
We visited infested avocado orchards in the Hefer Valley and the region southwest of the Carmel mountains (south of Haifa). We visited a Reed orchard which is believed to have been infested approximately 5 to 6 years. Three years ago this grove showed heavy infestation in the entire grove. What we saw on our visit was severe limb dieback, many broken branches scattered on the orchard floor, dropped mature fruit and smaller than normal fruit size for the fruit remaining on the trees. Signs of the beetle boring as evidenced by sugar exudates were easy to find wherever we looked. Dr. Mendel told us that the grower is giving up on this orchard and plans to bulldoze the orchard after harvest. We went on to see several other groves; in all except a 2-year-old orchard it was easy to find limb dieback, fallen fruit and sugar exudate up and down branches. We were told that they do not often find infestation of young groves but when they do, it is usually on the base of the trunk (either rootstock or scion).
We visited a plot with some growers along with Leo Winer (an extension officer) and Udi Gafni (head of the research and development unit of GRANOT) where insecticide applications to infested trees had been made last fall (2012). Unfortunately, signs of continued beetle activity were relatively easy to find. The growers told us about seeing fruit shriveling as the branch dies back. Since substantial fruit drop occurs of both mature and developing there is also an overall drop in productivity as an infestation spreads throughout a grove. Growers are extremely concerned and frustrated that there are no control measures for the beetle. Similar to California, Israel has historically used minimal pesticide sprays. The growers know that in areas already infested that spray applications are key to their continued orchard viability.
Avocado growers in Israel are also seeing problems with Botryosphaeria fungal infections. We visited the northern Negev Desert area where avocados are grown. We went to a large Hass orchard the grower is attempting to control this problem using phosphite injections. We were able to see upper limb dieback and staining on the upper branches.
In the meantime, Drs. Mendel and Freeman are continuing to study beetle biology and the behavior of the Fusarium fungal component. Dr. Mendel is developing a method to raise the beetle in the laboratory. This will be a important breakthrough since it will allow for a better understanding of the beetle life cycle. They know that the female beetle once it flies and seeks a place to burrow has about a 48 hour window to successfully establish itself in the host plant since this is the time period it can survive without feeding. We also learned that the beetle carries the Fusarium spores in its mycangium (a specialized structure at the back of its jaw), rather than hyphae. The larvae and pupa do not have mycangium, only the adults. While the larvae pupate, the Fusarium in the galleries sporulates and the emerging adult as it feeds picks up the Fusarium spores. On a side note, Drs. Mendel and Freeman do not necessarily agree with our use of the name PHSB. They argue that the beetle is monophagous (eats only one kind of food, Fusarium) but uses several tree species as hosts. We will have to see how the final name for the beetle is ultimately settled among the insect taxonomists.
Finally, Dr. Mendel is very worried about the spread of the beetle to native tree species in Israel, especially oaks which are found in many areas throughout the country. The box elder (which also occurs as a landscape tree in California) has been decimated by the PHSB. This is a warning flag for all California residents to take action to safeguard our native oaks, other native species and landscape trees.
These visits reinforced the extreme importance that the California industry must be diligent looking for tree infestation. The industry must work with the landscape industry and forestry service in southern California to understand how fast the infestation is spreading and what hosts are most susceptible. The industry needs to continue funding both applied (surveys, control measures and understanding of the beetle and fungal biology) as well as more basic work such as the origin of the beetle. This latter piece of information may lead to better ideas concerning control measures. Finally California researchers and industry leaders would be well advised to collaborate closely with our Israeli colleagues. They are facing this crisis head on since the PSHB has already spread into commercial groves. From their advanced experience, the California industry can learn much.
A conference on the PSHB and its Fusarium fungal symbiont was held in August 2012 in Riverside. The talks from this meeting are available for review on the website www.avocadosource.com,
Invasive Ambrosia Beetle Conference - The Situation in California ...
www.avocadosource.com/Journals/...2012/IABC_20120814_TOC.ht..
. Video of the conference presentations from the public meeting are available for viewing on YouTube. The science portion of the meeting will be posted on YouTube in the forthcoming weeks.
Below
Figures 1,2. ‘Reed’ avocado tree in the Hefer Valley, Israel. Note previous limb breakage and branch dieback due to infestation by the PSHB and its fungal symbiont, Fusarium. (Pictures taken 3/9/2013 by M.L. Arpaia).
Figure 3. Infested ‘Reed’ branch in later stages of decline. The white larvae are termites. Once the branch begins to dieback, termite infestation usually follows. Note the staining of the wood and evidence of the PHSB galleries. (Picture taken 3/9/2013 by M.L. Arpaia)
Figure 4. External symptoms of infestation including sugar exudate and bark darkening reveals wood staining due to Fusarium infection of the woody tissue. (Picture taken 3/9/2013 by M. L. Arpaia)
Figure 5. Small branch infestation and dieback in ‘Hass’. Picture taken at Kibbutz Ma’agan Michael along the central coast of Israel. (Picture taken 3/9/2013 by M. L. Arpaia)
Figure 6. ‘Hass’ avocado tree in the northern Negev affected with Botryosphaeria. Note the dieback and the fact that previously infested wood has been removed. (Picture taken 3/9/2013 by M. L. Arpaia)
/h3>- Author: Ben Faber
The Avocado: Botany, Production and Uses, 2nd Edition
By Bruce Shaffer, Nigel Wolstenholme and Anthony Whiley
This brand new book summarizes avocado science and technology and reviews production practices on a worldwide scale. The book is split into 15 chapters and covers all aspects of avocado production and science and includes: history, distribution and uses, taxonomy and botany, propagation, crop management, diseases and insect and mite pests. This book builds on the 2002 edition and includes the works of 45 writers from all over the avocado world.
Avocado book