Post by cletus on Dec 26, 2014 17:47:05 GMT -5
I've avoided planting plums in this hot-humid biome of SE/Mid Atlantic US. The multitudes of insects and diseases which attack them here are such that even organic growers with resistant varieties still have to spray Surround (kaolin clay). Its possible to find varieties with resistance to the various microbial diseases, but plum curculio seems more difficult. I don't know that any plum is fully resistant to curculio, but Edible Landscaping says bloom time is a factor:
"The white profuse flowers bloom later than European, American, and Japanese plums. So, they escape late frosts and are usually not a host for plum curculio. They have finished their egg laying cycle by the time the beach plum sets its fruit."
A NAFEX post suggests a resistance mechanism also:
"Beach plum seems to be able to resist it by sealing
up the egg in pitch as soon as it's laid, preventing it from hatching."
That said, multiple sources indicate that beach plums do sometimes get curculio and in their native habitat plum gouger. Burbank said he used P. maritima in his multi-species plum crosses, but I haven't seen any available cultivars. It would be something to have a no- or even minimum-spray plum in this biome. I wonder about the possibility of introgressing some degree of curculio resistance (and other adaptive traits) into some of the finer plums or pluots.
P. japonica might also play a part: "This species appears to have some resistance to plum curculio [Conotrachelus nenuphar (Herbst)], but whether or not this is true resistance that can be transferred and utilized remains to be seen (Yonce et al., 1995)."
"The white profuse flowers bloom later than European, American, and Japanese plums. So, they escape late frosts and are usually not a host for plum curculio. They have finished their egg laying cycle by the time the beach plum sets its fruit."
A NAFEX post suggests a resistance mechanism also:
"Beach plum seems to be able to resist it by sealing
up the egg in pitch as soon as it's laid, preventing it from hatching."
That said, multiple sources indicate that beach plums do sometimes get curculio and in their native habitat plum gouger. Burbank said he used P. maritima in his multi-species plum crosses, but I haven't seen any available cultivars. It would be something to have a no- or even minimum-spray plum in this biome. I wonder about the possibility of introgressing some degree of curculio resistance (and other adaptive traits) into some of the finer plums or pluots.
P. japonica might also play a part: "This species appears to have some resistance to plum curculio [Conotrachelus nenuphar (Herbst)], but whether or not this is true resistance that can be transferred and utilized remains to be seen (Yonce et al., 1995)."
