Project Coordinator:
Dr Tian Schutte

Research focuses on all pre-harvest leaf and fruit diseases other than citrus black spot, viz. Alternaria, Botrytis, Phaeoramularia, Diplodia and Phytophthora brown rot.

The aim of this project is to provide an industry service whereby new spray programmes are comparatively evaluated, fungicide resistance is monitored, inoculum levels are monitored and standardised recommendations are provided.

The main objective is to improve the pack-out percentage of export citrus fruit in the field before post-harvest treatments, thereby enabling the citrus producer to realise a maximum return upon delivery of a quality product into the market place.

This is achieved by:

· Monitoring the disease levels in the orchards by means of spore traps
· Disease prediction
· Screening and field evaluation of new and old fungicides alone and in combination with other fungicides
· Development of new spray programmes to control a broad spectrum of diseases with one single spray
· Limiting the build-up of residues in the fruit rind
· Breeding of resistant cultivars to diseases
· Monitoring of latent diseases in green fruit
· Registration of new fungicides.

<< Download spore poster here >>