What are the control methods for cherry wood rot?

The symptoms appear on various wound sites such as frost injury, insect injury, and mechanical injury on branches and trunks, where small fruiting bodies of the pathogen are scattered or clustered, which are its external symptoms. The affected xylem forms a rather indistinct white sapwood rot.

Pathogenic fungus, Basidiomycota, Agaricomycetes, Aphyllophorales, Schizophyllum commune Fr.

Disease pattern: The pathogen overwinters as mycelium latent in the affected xylem. In the following spring, when the temperature rises to 7-9 degrees C, it continues to spread and become active toward healthy wood, and at 16-24 degrees C it spreads relatively rapidly. In summer and autumn of that year it disperses spores and infects through various wounds. Weak trees and dying trees are susceptible to the disease. Trees with many wounds and in a weakened state often develop severe disease.

Control methods

1 Strengthen orchard management and enhance tree vigor. For severely diseased trees, old trees, and dying trees, dig them out and burn them promptly. Apply more fertilizer. Prune reasonably.

2 Check the tree body frequently; when fungal fruiting bodies are found, scrape them off quickly together with the bark, and apply 1% copper sulfate solution for disinfection.

3 Protect the tree body and reduce wounds. Apply Bordeaux mixture or coal tar, or 1% copper sulfate solution, to saw cuts.

4 Do not practice continuous cropping in the orchard, that is, in apple, pear, peach and other orchards, after cutting down old fruit trees, rotate with crops such as beans for at least 3 years before establishing a cherry orchard; do not cut down trees and immediately establish a new orchard on the original site.