I am hoping our resident fire blight expert, John Trout will run with this topic and warn us what to plant and not to plant if you have fireblight in your region. I am blessed to not have much FB pressure. Cedar Apple Rust (CAR) does show up in my Shizuka which are highly suscepable to CAR, even though I don't know of any infected cedar trees within a few miles of my orchard. We have two cedar trees on the property but CAR requires the Eastern red cedar to spread. I believe mine are white cedar because they show no infection. So I have dodged a couple serious threats to my apples so far --knock on apple wood-- but I did feel the devistation of apple maggot lava this year and lost about 20-40% of my harvest. You can eat a lot of good apple flesh from a maggot-damaged apple, but they do not store well.
I found this article online which I thought John would find interesting. Someday soon all varieties may be fireblight resistant!
Gala resistant to fire blight developed
Fruit growers fear fire blight. Time and again this bacteria causes
great damage to apple growth, reports German website Proplanta.de. The
last large epidemic was in 2007 and caused damage estimated at 50
million Swiss francs (around 41 million Euro). A quarter of a million
trees had to be destroyed to try and stop the spread of the Erwinia
amylovora bacteria, and caused growers to use sprays containing
antibiotic streptomycin - a controversial method of saving fruit trees
and crops.
Researchers into plant pathogens, Cesar Gesslar from
the 'Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich' (ETH) and the
Julius Kühne Institute in Germany, in the latest edition of 'Plant
Bio-technical Journal' presented a genetically modified variant of the
favourite Gala variety, resistant against fire blight.
It is the
first time that researchers have been successful in finding a wild
apple resistant to fire blight and to isolate and confirm the gene
responsible. The gene carried the genetic code for a protein which
recognised the surface protein of the attacking bacteria and caused the
plant to produce an immune response to it. This one gene is sufficient
to provide the plant with protection and with this genetic code
researchers were then able to successfully develop a Gala apple
resistant to the bacteria.
Publication date: 3/24/2014