My Kesar fruit pulp is sweet and fine but the skin develops black spots and patches, and graders downgrade it. Is this disease or a sunripe carbon issue? How do I get clean skin?
2 Answers
Black spots on otherwise good Kesar fruit are most often anthracnose (cloudy small black spots that enlarge in storage) or bacterial black spot (angular black lesions, sometimes with cracking, more in humid coastal South Gujarat). Both spread in humid, rainy flowering and fruiting weather. For anthracnose, follow a preventive spray schedule from flowering through pea stage with recommended fungicides on rotation, and a post-harvest hot water dip helps cut storage spotting. For bacterial black spot, use recommended copper based sprays, avoid overhead wetting, and remove badly infected twigs. Clean orchard sanitation, pruning for airflow, and not harvesting wet fruit all reduce skin spotting. Always observe the label pre-harvest interval, especially if fruit may go for export or pulp.
In Navsari side the angular black spots are bacterial, copper sprays helped me. The round spreading ones in storage were anthracnose, hot water dip reduced those.