Two years ago, my Asian pear trees (Niitaka and Hosui) were infected with fireblight. They were almost die. Couple applications of fertilome fireblight spray (21% Streptomycin) during budding and flowering seemed to take care of the problem this year. Unfortunately, I wasn't pay much particular attention when the tree was starting to produce fruit. I was just about to thin the fruits when they reach the nickel size. I found some ugly tiny fruits.
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| The hosui pears were bubbled up to form a very strange shape. |
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| Some were completely infested |
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| Some fruits were producing white tubes and orange dust |
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Cut the fruit open and place in under my stereo microscope.
It appears that there are some sort of insect infestation in isde. |
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| The white tube under stereo microscope. |
I sent the pictures to Georgia Gardener. I received the response. It appears that the white tubes are from some sort of fugal infection similar to
Cedar - Hawthorn rust (The fungus develops on a cedar tree and then infects hawthorn trees growing close by. After growing on the leaves, orange, dusty spores are released that colonize nearby cedar trees.) After research a little bit, the same type of rust fungus also form similar life-cycle between the juniper and pear/apple. I also received the response from the Gwinnett county agriculture extension about the insect infestation. They might be codling moth or Asian fruit moth. I am not sure which one. I am going to set up some trap to collect some moth during the summer.
It looks like I will have smaller crop this year. The infection is serious. It almost wiped out three quarters of all my fruits. I will remember to treat the tree when my tress start setting fruits next year.
