Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting: Rochester, N.Y. August 31 and September 1, 1953
Science
Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 44th Annual Meeting: Rochester, N.Y. August 31 and September 1, 1953
Northern Nut Growers Association -- Periodicals; Nut trees -- Periodicals; Nuts -- Periodicals
I'd just like to have a show of hands. How many in the audience here
have had experience with the walnut husk maggot or had injury on the
fruit? (Showing of hands.) I see the majority of you certainly know what
it is, but just as a brief reminder, the type of injury, of course,
varies somewhat depending possibly on the variety and time of year at
which the fruits first become infested. We know, of course, that the
flies do not begin to puncture the husk until they attain a certain
degree of softness. Early in the season they are not able, apparently,
to penetrate the husk with the ovipositor, and that, of course, varies
not only with hardness but with varieties. The flies, of course, may be
seen on the fruit even though they are not able to penetrate the husk
and deposit their eggs. These husks, of course, many of them, become dry
and hard after they have been tunnelled out, and it is almost impossible
to clean the shells. Occasionally you have nuts in which you have a
separation of the suture, and in those cases you very frequently get the
exudate from the husk penetrating through the suture in the shell onto
the kernels themselves, and in those cases molds may grow on the kernels
so that those fruits are no good.
In connection with this injury I am going to show you some slides in a
few minutes, but the preceding speaker made reference to a type of
injury which occurred on the terminal growth of a walnut tree and that
is one that we have had a lot of inquiries at the Experiment Station
about, injury to the new terminal growth fairly early in the season.
That probably, in most cases, is caused by the butternut or the walnut
curculio. Early in the season these adults begin feeding on the new
terminal growth, and they even puncture the new growth and lay their
eggs there before the nuts are large enough for them to attack and very
often considerable killing back of the terminal growth occurs. I have
seen it on English walnut seedlings in nursery rows where there would be
very large kill-back from the walnut curculio. Superficially the injury
on the fruit is quite similar to that of the husk maggot.
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