In today’s Almond Matters, brought to you by Valent, hull rot prevention methods are going to be the most effective approach for ensuring almond trees remain safe from damage that results from infection. Curative actions are possible, however, once hull rot takes hold it can be much more difficult to address.
“The biggest thing with hull rot is timing,” said Field Market Development Specialist for Valent USA Todd Burkdoll. “Getting the product on there before hull split is really, really key. Because if you wait until after hull split to make a fungicide application for hull rot and the infection is already incurred, it’s already infected inside the hull where the split is. It’s hard to get product in there to stop it or to prevent it.”
Prevention methods are going to be significantly more successful than making attempts at curative action. “Your curative activity is second-best, at best. You really need to be on the preventative side,” Burkdoll noted. “It’s really hard to stop it once it’s got inside there because you have to literally soak the nuts in a fungicide solution to put the fire out, in this case, the disease infection.”
Attentive monitoring will better prepare growers for a when an application will be needed, as the first nuts begin to split. Burkdoll suggests making a fungicide application when the first hull split is found in the orchard, to prevent any infection from taking hold when the nuts are vulnerable.
Effective hull rot prevention can help keep disease pressures low, reducing the likelihood for the various types of damage that can be caused by infection. “Once it gets in around the nut it can cause the nuts not to come off the tree, you’ll have stick-tights, that’s one of the problems. The other thing is it can discolor,” said Burkdoll. “It can infect into the nut and then secondary pathogens and other things can follow, so it can turn into a complex.”
Listen to the report below.