Source: NCSU COOPERATIVE EXTENSION, 6/28/22



This afternoon I left the office prepared to take photos of Glomerella leaf spot in our Gala research orchard unsprayed trees. Instead, I was rudely greeted with a bunch of yellowing, blotchy leaves (see photo above). Don’t get me wrong, there were certainly clusters of Glomerella in check trees, but this was the first year I’ve seen Marssonina Leaf Blotch (MLB) i) Arrive with such severity so early and ii) Have such a high incidence and severe symptoms on 'Gala’. In fact, I was so shocked I called my colleague at Penn State to confirm my observations.

While MLB has “historically” been a problem primarily on 'Rome Beauty’ here in NC, it’s been reported that most if not all apple cultivars are susceptible to the disease. While I haven’t yet had a reason to be too concerned about the economic impact of this disease in the past few years because it had been causing issues on large Rome trees (which could stand to lose a few trees anyways) and because we hadn’t seen symptoms on fruit, this year I’m slightly more concerned.

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