Brown rot - symptoms and recognition

Affected fruit show a pale brown/mid brown circular rot usually associated with a wound.
The rot rapidly becomes covered with buff-coloured pustules, usually in concentric rings.
Although the initial infection is always through a wound, the brown rot fungus can then spread to other fruit in a cluster by contact.

Brown rot overwinters in the orchard as cankers usually at the base of dead fruiting spurs, often referred to as foot cankers.
Water-marking may be apparent on such cankers.
Buff-coloured pustules appear on these cankers in early summer.
The fungus also overwinters as mummified fruit either stuck on the tree or on the orchard floor.
These fruits are shrivelled almost black and develop buff-coloured pustules in summer after rain.

Infection in store begins as a small brown spot on a wound or where a healthy fruit has been in contact with an infected fruit.
It rapidly invades the entire fruit forming a mid to dark brown almost black, usually evenly shaped firm rot.
In Cox and Bramley, the rot surface is often covered with white fungal growth and black resting bodies (sclerotia).
This symptom is less common on Gala, Jonagold and Egremont Russet.
After prolonged storage the whole fruit may become hard, black and mummified.
Symptoms of the rot in store do not resemble those observed in the orchard.
Brown rot spreads in store by contact.
Nests of brown rotted fruit may therefore be observed in later stored fruit.

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