College of Agriculture & Natural Resources

• Alternaria fruit rot

  The disease appears as velvety dark green to black, circular, sunken lesions on mature fruit; the infected tissue is firm and brown. Disease is typically associated with over-ripe or damaged fruit, or fruit held in storage.

• Oystershell scale

  The adult female remains immobile under a small brown scale in the shape of an oyster shell attached to the bark of branches. The white and oval eggs are laid inside the scale and crawlers emerge in the spring during the petal fall stage of apple.

• Brown rot

  Infected flowers turn brown, wither, and either become fixed to twigs as a gummy mass or drop like unpollinated flowers.

• Pear psylla

  Adults resemble very small cicadas and can be reddish brown or tan to light brown. Smaller, wingless nymphs are yellow with red eyes, flat and oval in shape, and develop within a clear honeydew drop.

• Verticillium wilt

  Leaves wilted or browned on one or several branches, often remaining attached; the rest of the tree appears healthy. Young trees are often killed by infection.

• Mineola moth (Destructive pruneworm)

  Adult is a bluish gray moth that assumes a wedge shape when at rest. It has a transverse broad white stripe bordered by a smaller reddish brown stripe in the middle of the forewings a smaller set of similar bands occur near the posterior edge.

• Rusty spot

  Lesions begin as small, circular, tan to orange blemishes approximately 3–5 mm in diameter. The discoloration is due to discoloring of the fuzz on the fruit.

• Lady beetles

  Adults are oval and convex in shape, often brightly colored (e.g., orange-red or yellow) and usually with black spots or marks on their wing covers, sometimes with a checkerboard appearance.

• Pear thrips

  Adult is slender and brown, with short antennae and a swelling behind the head; the wings are long and narrow, with fringes of long hairs.

• Spring cankerworm

  The adult male is gray and has winding lines on its forewings the female has stumpy gray wings. The larva is pale green to dark brown with two yellow longitudinal bands on the sides. It moves in a looping inchworm fashion.

• Oriental fruit moth

  The adult is a small moth with dark gray mottled wings that lighten somewhat at the outer edges. The larva is dirty white to pinkish with a reddish brown head and an anal comb.

• Obliquebanded leafroller

  Adult wings are beige, tinged with red. Forewings are crossed with oblique brown bands. The female is larger than the male. The green eggs are laid in masses on the upper surface of leaves.

• Pistol casebearer

  Adult is dark gray with fringed wings. The pistol casebearer appears similar to a cigar casebearer: a small, yellowish larva with a black head that builds and hides in a shelter.

• Twospotted spider mite

  Adult and nymphal mites are yellowish to pale green with a dorsal pair of apparent dark "spots". Males are smaller than females and have a pointed abdomen. The female takes on an orange tinge in the fall.

• Tufted apple bud moth

  Adult is an inconspicuous moth, varying from mottled gray at the wing base to brown at the wing tip, with a lighter colored margin along the wing's leading edge. Two or three groups of tufted scales can be seen on the top of the wings.

• Winter moth

  Adult male has grayish-brown wings; the female has remnants of wings and so cannot fly. This, in combination with the female's large body, makes the legs appear to be long, and gives her the superficial appearance of a spider.

• Apple (Lyonetia) leafminer

  The adult has narrow white forewings with extensive gray-black and brown markings apically wing margins are fringed with long hairs. The larva is whitish and generally concealed within the leaf mine.

• Prionus borers

  Adults are robust, broad, somewhat flattened blackish to reddish brown beetles with antennae roughly half the length of their bodies.

• Peachtree borer

  Adult is a clear-winged, metallic-blue moth that has one broad orange or two or more yellow bands across the abdomen; both sexes have more amber sheen on wings than lesser peachtree borer adults.

• European apple sawfly

  The adult looks similar to a small, orange-brown wasp with the ventral side and legs orange in color. It has transparent wings with many veins. The egg, oval and translucent, is inserted into the receptacle of the flower.