3 Ways to Incorporate IPM in Orchards for Fire Blight

by Tom Hardy Tom Hardy

If not controlled, fire blight has a significant impact on apple and pear orchards. That disease has a multifaceted nature, so sometimes it is confusing to control fully.

Fire blight spreads very rapidly if you do not take any precautions. It comes from shoots, leaves, fruits, twigs, and other parts of plants.

Growers must be aware of its harmful consequences and get to know all about a fire blight. Taking timely measures for effective treatment is one of the priorities of apple and pear orchard growers.

Integrated pest management is the latest mechanism to slow down or eliminate this type of plant disease. It is beneficial in apple and pear orchards to curtail the onset and spread of fire blight through methods such as complete sanitation, tree care practices, and biological products.

Without wasting more time, let us unveil these best practices of IPM to diminish the fire blight in orchards.

Get Your Orchards Ready

The availability of apple and peach orchard varieties is the first consideration for farmers. Both plants have different species that affect or do not affect external stimulators.

Choosing the right cultivars that are resistant to bacteria and plant diseases. Some cultivars have the property to offer moderate resistance against outside factors without degradation of their quality. It improves the chance of the growth of disease-free trees.

But this sorting task for these species of cultivars is difficult because many cultivars are more susceptible to the disease. It is a kind of cultural trait in some pear and apple types.

It does not matter how these cultivars possess protective features against disease or bacteria. During the off-season, when trees and blossoms are growing, preventive measures should be your top priority.

Early sanitation is a preventive measure used to control the spread of fire blight disease in susceptible trees. Thus, it is important for growers to check trees for overwintering or holdover cankers along with blighted twigs.

When they discover such conditions, it is critical that they prune and remove any necessary inoculum during the winter prior to the growing season. If cankers and inoculum are not removed during the dormant winter season, the bacteria will stay active and ready to spread and create new infections in the spring season.

Inspect and Prune Carefully

Growing seasons, in particular, are the primary cause of the appearance of signs and symptoms of the fire blight disease cycle. The characteristics of this disease are shoot infections, water-soaked twigs and blossoms, discoloration, and, eventually, bacterial sizes.

Winter season is the pruning stage to the onset of blight diseases. It is because critical trees grow as fire blight can spread rapidly once activated in an infected tree.

Fire blight spreads in various ways in various parts of plants or trees. Therefore, different pruning methodologies are used to cut off these diseased portions. Let us figure them out.

For twigs

Cut into dry wood up to 4 inches or more below the visibility of dead wood. This pruning procedure stops when you stick to healthy tissues.

For cankers

Remove dead tissue from trunks or large branches until healthy tissue is visible.

Full Infected Case

Take any infected plant tissue completely out of the orchard to burn or place it in the trash. It does not re-infect other healthy trees nearby.

The fire blight case appears during the spring and summer seasons. It can spread rapidly in these seasons. It is why the practice of proper sanitation is needed, so that fire blight does not affect healthy tissues.

First, you must remove the diseased portion of trees, cut dry wood 12–15 inches below the diseased part, and sanitize tools between each cut in a 10% bleach solution combined with a few drops of liquid dish soap and Bio Fungicide.

These above strategies aid in avoiding the spread and infection caused by the fire blight in the apple and pear orchards.

Apply Effective Biological Products

Whether you are a conventional or organic grower, you must follow integrated pest management. Such a technique is beneficial in minimizing the activity of fire blight, which spreads and creates more spores.

Always keep in mind that a fire blight obeys a strategic growth cycle, and many factors increase its severity for further boosting. So you take some precautions when you notice its formation signs.

During winter

You ought to strictly adhere to sanitary canker removal practices and implement a dry Nema Pro Nematicide to treat fire blight during dormant periods.

Before Bloom

Choose chemical compounds that are natural predators to battle against bacteria and fungi for consistently healthy trees and plants.

Choose a biological plant activator and spray it throughout the plant before blooming until the tissues are green. It will stimulate the defense mechanisms in the trees in apple and pear orchards to fight against growing bacteria.

Instead of simply adding a protective cover, that activator does not provide a complete shield against disease infection.

Lotion of Bactericides

Applying a bactericide to wrangle against diseases from multiple angles. A bio-fungicide disrupts the growth cycle of bacteria on the plant surface, while a multi-action liquid bactericide breaks up the bacteria cycle.

Throughout Fruit Growth

From spring to harvest is the best time when you could apply liquid copper fungicide as in this season, most cases of fire blight happen.

Regular application of fungicides such as Paecilomyces lilacinus and insecticides in accordance with label instructions will halt and control Erwinia Amylovora outbreaks on apples and pears while also destroying bacteria cells.

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Created on Jan 9th 2023 04:47. Viewed 273 times.

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