How to Prevent and Control Fig Anthracnose? A Detailed Guide to Practical Methods

This disease is an important disease on fig fruit, and because of its damage, large numbers of fruits often rot.

[Damage symptoms] It mainly damages fruit, and can also infect branches. After the fruit is infected, round, slightly sunken, brown patches appear on the fruit surface, and then concentric ring-like black dots appear on the lesions. When the weather is humid, pink sticky material grows on their surface, namely the fungus's conidial masses. Finally, the lesions continuously expand, the fruit softens and rots, and sometimes shrivels into a mummified fruit hanging on the tree. After branches become diseased, they show light brown patches and then gradually dry up and die.

[Disease occurrence pattern] The pathogen overwinters on mummified fruit, and in the spring of the following year produces conidia, which are spread by wind and rain and infect twigs and fruit. Later, spores are produced again on new lesions, causing repeated infection. Humid weather and continuous rainy days can promote severe outbreaks of the disease. When fruit is first infected, because the symptoms are not obvious, it is relatively difficult to notice, until the fruit approaches maturity in September, when the lesions expand rapidly and the disease becomes noticeably more severe in the field.

[Control methods]

(1) Carefully clean the orchard in winter to reduce sources of infection in the field.

(2) During the plum rain period from June to July and in early autumn, spray chemicals carefully to protect the fruit. Chemicals may include 50% carbendazim wettable powder at 1000 times dilution, or 70% chlorothalonil wettable powder at 800 times dilution, or 80% anthracnose thiram wettable powder at 800 times dilution.