Use care in the picking and handling of fruit to avoid punctures and skin abrasions. Any break in the skin of the fruit enables brown rot to more easily cause infection. Symptoms develop suddenly, almost overnight, and in waves, generally from June through August. It is most severe when a cool, rainy period of 4 - 5 days precedes several hot, sunny days. Although it appears NLB is not fungal caused, the disease is reduced when ziram is included in the cover sprays.
Wet weather is ideal for most fungal diseases.
If summer rains are a frequent event in your area of the state expect an increase in sooty blotch and flyspeck, black rot, bot rot, bitter rot and any other rots that might have made their way into your orchard. As always, good orchard sanitation is a must for control of summer rot disease problems. Plant nutritional status is important for all phases of plant growth and has a direct effect on vigor, fruitfulness, cold hardiness, and other factors. Tissue analysis is the most reliable means of determining plant nutritional status. Soil analysis is useful when used in conjunction with tissue analysis.