What does it look like?
Symptoms of Apple black spot include circular black spots on leaves and apple fruit.
Infection early in the season may cause misshapen fruit. By harvest, spots are dried, cracked, and brown with a black outer edge.
Infection just prior to or during harvest causes small black 'pepper spotting' on fruit.
Why is it a problem?
Apple black spot is found all over the world wherever apples are grown. In New Zealand, black spot is a common problem in all regions. It’s a wet weather disease. Rainy and humid conditions early in the growing season provide ideal conditions for infection. In general, the higher the temperature and the longer it rains, the more severe the infection period will be.
Apple black spot is spread mainly through windblown leaves which carry spores of the fungus.
Control methods
Control methods include clearing away leaf litter and dead material from trees, and using fungicides.
Management Programme
Sustained Control Programme
Sustained Control exists to hold well-established pests at an acceptable maximum. However, the costs of management and control grow in-step with the size of the invasive population. Because cost:benefit returns can fall to 1:5 or less, most of this work is focused on specific sites of high ecological value. While the spread of these pests between neighbouring properties remains the predominant risk, in some cases control within properties is still sought and warranted. A sustained control programme will hold populations to maximum acceptable limits over the period of the RPMP.
More informationRules
Plan Rule 19
Occupiers of unmanaged pipfruit production sites shall, on receipt of a written direction from an Authorised Person, control;
a) apple black spot on their land from the presence of green tips until fruit maturity/harvest
b) codling moth on their land if five or more codling moths are caught in any one codling moth pheremone trap during any calendar week on their land
c) European canker by inspecting all pipfruit trees on their land at least four times during the year, applying post-harvest sprays if canker is found and removing and burning all infected pipfruit tree parts showing any presence of European canker
d) fireblight on their land during the pipfruit bloom period (from pink to petal fall)
e) lightbrown apple moth on their land once thirty lightbrown apple moths are caught in any one lightbrown apple moth pheremone trap on their land from 15th December until fruit harvest
on their land from the presence of green tips until fruit maturity/harvest.
Taxonomies
TypeDiseases
GroupFungi and rust
HabitatLand
Management ProgrammeSustained Control Programme
RulesPlan Rule 19
