- Author: Ben Faber
Get ready for more rotting avocado fruit if you have leaf blight showing up in your tree canopy. The fungal spores (one of the Botryosphaerias we once lumped as Dothiorella) that create the infection spread in an irregular pattern over the leaf and down the stem (then called “stem blight”). This is often confused with salt or tip burn. The two conditions are caused by the same problem, water and or salt stress. However, in the case of leaf blight, this is a pathogen that can pass to neighboring fruit and begin the process of rot. This starts happening when the fruit starts ripening and softening, so it's often not seen in the orchard, but the packhouse or in the market.
Control is basically gaining control over the soil moisture and salinity in the root zone and when the leaf blight starts showing up in the canopy, cutting as much out back to green tissue as is economically possible.
Leaf blights from this group of fungi have also been reported as infecting other fruits, such as citrus, apple, peach and grape among others. The solution is the same - water right and cut the stuff out when and if it shows up.
Photos:
Body rots
Rot spreading to flesh
Leaf Blight
- Author: Ben Faber
A 'Meyer' lemon should be quite happy along the coast, unless it gets planted in new soil that has low copper because of high soil pH or high organic matter. And then you wonder what is wrong.
Mild copper deficiency is usually associated with large, dark green leaves on long soft angular shoots. Young shoots may develop into branches which appear curved or “S-shaped," referred to as “ammoniation” usually resulting from excessive nitrogen fertilization. It's actually thought to be too much nitrogen relative to copper in the plant and can be corrected by foliar sprays. Twigs can develop blister-like pockets of clear gum at nodes. As twigs mature, reddish brown eruptions may occur in the outer portion of the wood. It can be quite shocking. Severely affected twigs commonly die back from the tip with new growth appearing as multiple buds or “witches broom”. Necrotic-corky areas on the fruit surface may sometimes occur in extreme situations. In some cases fruit cracking occurs with exudates.
Copper deficiency is more likely to occur in new plantings on previously uncropped soils, which are usually deficient or totally lacking in copper. In California, it has been referred to as “corral” disease or “midden” disease because it is associated with high organic matter that ties up the copper, or old Native American sites were debris had been piled. It is often localized in certain areas. Once I saw it on nursery trees that had had inadequate copper in the nutrient solution. I've only seen it on citrus, and not any other subtropical like avocado, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.
I've also seen gummosis similar to this occurring with drought and water management. It more commonly occurs as a twig die back at the tips. And certainly Phytophthora gummosis will show gumming. It's that little gumming pocket under the bark is usually the way to distinguish copper deficiency from these two others.
Pictures: pocket gumming (U. of Florida), oozing (Yara), gumming, and more gumming not a worm
- Author: Ben Faber
The calls are coming in and have been for the last several months. The trees are tired, worn out and look horrible. What's the problem? Well four years of drought, accumulated salts in the root zone and irrigation practices that aren't removing the salts from the root zone. It sets up a situation of tip burn, but much more extensive than tip burn is the water stress that results from salt accumulation. Salts compete with roots for water and they act to pull water away from the roots. It is as if less water is being applied. The water stress sets up the trees for a fungal infection called variously leaf blight, stem blight and in young trees, death. We used to call this Dothiorella blight, but since the work of Akif Eskalen at UC Riverside, it turns out it is one of many fungi that cause this problem, most of them Botryosphaerias.
The leaves show what would appear to be salt burn damage which increasingly causes leaf drop. In fact, there's often a pile of leaves under the canopy unless the wind has blown them away. The difference between this and salt burn is that there is not a regular pattern to it. It can start on the margins, or in the middle of the leaf, or wherever it darn well pleases. Whereas salt/tip burn always starts at the leaf tip and progressively moves back onto the main part of the leaf. Leaf blight (I don't like to use bigger words than that – Botryosphaeria. Try spelling it on the phone), on the other hand doesn't follow this regular pattern. It's a random pattern.
This a decomposing fungus. Wherever there is organic matter – leaves, twigs, branches, fruit, whatever is dead on the ground – there is a decomposing fungus. When the fungus finds a stressed plant, it invades the most susceptible part of the plant, usually the leaf. It starts growing through the tissue and down the leaf petiole. It then starts growing down the dead part of the plant. Most of a tree is dead. All that stuff under the bark and cambium is dead tissue, although it still carries water. In mature trees, there is a capacity to close off the decay and limit it. In young trees (younger than two or so), the capacity is lacking and the fungus can keep on growing down to the union and kill the tree.
As can be imagined, this fungus does not discriminate amongst the type of plants it feeds on. It will go to water-stressed, citrus, roses, apples, etc. It goes to every woody perennial that I am aware of. I've seen it on redwoods and eucalyptus. It especially goes after shallow-rooted species like avocado which are the most prone to water-stress. Like when a Santa Ana blows in and the irrigation schedule is slow to respond. Like when there is a heavy load of fruit. Fruit have stomata and the more environmental stress the more water they lose and pull on water from the tree.
Now imagine a tree loaded with fruit, in the later summer, with a Santa Ana and salt stress. Boom! Fruit drops and leaf blight shows up. And the damage doesn't go away, until it so severe that the leaf drops and new leaves come on in the spring.
Hopefully these rains will wash the salts from the root systems and refill the profile with high quality water. We are extremely reliant on winter rain to cover up the effects of the damage that irrigation water does to our soil and plants. And rain is the answer, as long as it's not too much.
Notice the even pattern of necrosis with tip burn
And the random pattern with leaf blight.
- Author: Ben Faber
You come on a leaf with the margins munched on. It's got to be a beetle or a looper or some insect doing the damage, right? Not necessarily. It's not time to drag out the Raid. Look at the damage closely. In the photos below you can see the dead leaf margins caused by either salt damage or more likely leaf blight. Leaf blight is a disease that shows up with water stress and is caused by a fungus, one of the Botryoshpaerias. It causes an uneven marginal necrosis that goes along the margin in a somewhat irregular pattern and often not at the leaf tip. In this case it does affect the leaf tip, and since salt burn and leaf blight are caused by the same conditions of water stress, it's probably a bit of both.
Lepidopteran larvae will more commonly feed in a smooth pattern, not the rough pattern seen here. Now with this dead tissue, the wind blows it out, and what's left is the uneven margin. No it's not time to spray an insecticide. It's time to reflect on irrigation. There's a lot of this damage out there now. On avocados, citrus, landscape plants. It's going away until the leaves drop and are replaced with new ones, that will hopefully be well hydrated by rain and proper irrigation.
Top photo is salt/leaf blight damage
Bottom is necrotic tissue that the wind has blown out
- Author: Ben Faber
I get a call.
He: My trees not doing well.
Me: What's the problem?
He: It's yellow?
Me: Have you looked at the roots? Are there roots?
He: NO
Me: I'll be out next week, but in the meantime, look at the root system.
This is a pretty common exchange and when I got out, you find out that the emitter is clogged, the ground is soggy, there's weed whack damage, there's gopher damage, there's…………………. All kinds of things that pop up and until you see the context that the poor tree is in, it's hard to diagnose the problem. Too much fertilizer, black drip tubing that had water heated in the sun and burned the roots, the trunk buried in mulch, it's hard to imagine all the possibilities. But start with the roots and then go where that leads you.
So, here's the scenario.
You get a call/email.
He: What's wrong with my young tree? It snapped off in the wind. Here's a picture of what's left. Corroded, bulbous graft union. Incompatibility? Extensive decay that indicates a problem of long standing. The leaves are green though, so it means it was hanging in there until the wind blew. Was the trunk buried at planting leading to asphyxiation and crown rot? Is it some sort of wound that started it off? Oh, and about 1% of the planting is like that.
Me: OK, I better take a look at it. I'll get some samples and send them into Akif Eskalen at UC Riverside and bring our plant pathologist Jim Downer out to look at it with me.
So tune in to find out what we diagnose as the problem. In the meantime, if you have an unknown avocado or citrus problem that looks of root origin. You can contact Akif and send him a sample after following the “Sample Submission Form” at: http://eskalenlab.ucr.edu/