Peach fruit fly
Whereas spotted-wing drosophila is the black sheep of an otherwise blameless family, the peach fruit fly is one of the Mafiosi of the insect world. By Anna Mouton. The peach fruit fly — Bactrocera zonata — shares a genus with…
Phytophthora
The name Phytophthora literally means plant destroyer — fitting for a genus that abounds in disease-causing species. By Anna Mouton. Phytophthora infestans thrust the genus into notoriety by launching the Irish Potato Famine of 1845–1849, estimated to have killed 1…
Pick postharvest winners
Growers consider many factors when deciding which cultivars to plant — postharvest performance should be one of these. By Anna Mouton. Planting trends often follow fruit prices, observes Keith Bradley, general manager of Fruitways AgriServices. “People look at their returns…
Plant-parasitic nematodes in orchards
Have you noticed a decline in your yields without a clear explanation? Experts warn that it could be due to plant-parasitic nematodes. By Jorisna Bonthuys. Each handful of soil contains hundreds of nematodes, most of which are so small that…
Post-harvest disease
Spores of decay-causing fungi are an ever-present threat to stone and pome fruit. Understanding exactly how the rot sets in can help growers prevent losses. By Anna Mouton. A post-harvest disease is any disease where the symptoms appear after harvest…
Postharvest performance of Lady in Red
What can physiological profiling tell us about this Cripps Pink mutation? By Anna Mouton. Apple growers are always on the lookout for new Cripps Pink strains that can deliver higher Class 1 pack-outs. Lady in Red is one such promising…
Predicting bud-break
Do chill units tell us anything? By Anna Mouton. The idea behind chill models is to figure out what trees will do in spring. Will they wake up smartly and crack on with flowering? Or will they linger over bud-break…
Protective netting in Washington State
Research results demonstrate the many benefits of putting nets over apple orchards. By Anna Mouton. Sunburn is as much a problem in Washington State as it is in South Africa. Washington growers have historically managed sunburn through overhead evaporative cooling…
Pseudomonas and Xanthomonas
Bacterial pathogens cause financial losses to fruit growers worldwide —South Africa is no exception. By Anna Mouton. The genera Pseudomonas and Xanthomonas contain disease-causing species that attack many different plants. But whereas all Xanthomonas species are associated with plants,…
Putting it in pictures
Creating a complete image database of pome-fruit diseases and disorders. By Grethe Bestbier. A picture tells a thousand words, and a compilation of pome-fruit disorder images does even more. In fact, according to Dr Ian Crouch, post-harvest physiologist at ExperiCo,…