Shot hole disease of apricot is showing up again this year. I looked at several apricots in the Mitchell area showing symptoms of the disease.
Last year Dave, a forester with the South Dakota Department of Agriculture, sent in two great pictures of the disease, fruit and foliage. The disease symptoms on the fruit are brown lesions with a deep purple band (Figure 1).
The leaves are also filled with holes (Figure 2), hence the name shot hole disease. If you look at the leaves after they first expand in the spring, you’d noticed these small lesions on the foliage but this infected tissue quickly drops out leaving these holes throughout the leaves.
The best control is a fungicide containing chlorothalonil applied just as the buds expanding and repeated 10 days later.
