Dr. Phyto

highbush blueberry

Vaccinium corymbosum

Diseases & pests on this plant

• spotted-wing drosophila (SWD)Drosophila suzukii

  Brown soft patches under skin of ripening berries 24-48h before harvest, tiny white maggots inside fruit when split, fruit collapses + leaks juice within 3 days, males with distinctive black wing-tip spot.

• mummyberry of blueberryMonilinia vaccinii-corymbosi

  Sudden wilting + browning of young blueberry shoots in spring (the diagnostic primary symptom), flowering shoots blackened + dropping, fruit replaced by grey-white pumpkin-shaped mummies at harvest (looks like the berry was sprayed with grey paint), mummies fall to ground + survive winter.

• Japanese beetlePopillia japonicaEU-notifiable quarantine organism

  Adults are bright metallic green with coppery wing-cases and small white tufts of hair along the sides of the abdomen; they feed in groups in sunshine, skeletonising leaves between the veins (a lacy look) and chewing flowers and fruit of a huge range of plants (rose, grape, lime, fruit, soft fruit); the white C-shaped grubs eat grass roots, causing brown patches of lawn that lift like a carpet.

• blueberry stem blightBotryosphaeria dothidea blueberry

  Sudden wilting + reddening of individual branches in summer, cinnamon-brown bark discoloration extending down from dead tip, dark pycnidia on dead bark, otherwise healthy bush with 1-3 collapsing branches.