Often fruit trees drop fruit before they get a chance to ripen. I am going to tell you the reasons for premature falling of fruits or fruit drop and what can you do to prevent it. Learn how to prevent flowers and fruits from falling by proper flower drop control and management. Many times it so happens that there are plenty of flowers but no fruits, so what to do if the tree dos not produce fruits.
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| Why Fruit Drop from a Tree? |
Reason of Premature Fruit Drop
Premature fall of fruit can be stopped from trees like mango, nectarine, peach, persimmon, pomegranate, etc., if you know what causes premature fruit drop (prevent mango fruit drop). The natural question is why fruits fall down in the garden prematurely? There are several reasons of fruit drop, including the inappropriate weather, high or low temperatures, too less or too much water, pests, insects and diseases, incorrect fertilization, besides it is a natural phenomenon, [1, 2].
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| Fruit Falling From a Nectarine Tree |
Fruit drop may be due to several reasons, so you must first identify the exact cause of fruit drop, then only the control methods can be applied.
The main reasons why a fruit tree sheds its fruit are given below:
1. Adverse Weather Conditions
Fruit can fall from a tree due to environmental stresses. Adverse weather conditions may also contribute to fruit drop. For example, persimmons may drop if the weather turns suddenly hot or suddenly cold. If there is freezing weather at the time of opening of the flower buds, fruit drop may occur.
Cold or wet weather during the bloom period will result in poor pollination, resulting in flower fall and less fruit production.
2. Water
Getting correct amount of water at right time is an important factor for the growth of a fruits on trees. The most important reason why a fruit tree will start dropping is probably the lack of water or excessive water. Dry soil or dry weather can stress trees out and they may drop the fruit. So you can give the tree extra water especially if it's really dry.
But on the other hand, excessive water will also drop fruit prematurely because fruit cannot hold too much moisture.
3. Lack of Nutrients / Fertilizer
Another reason for premature dropping of fruit from a tree is under or over fertilization at wrong time. The fruit drop may be due to deficiency of certain nutrients. If a fruit tree does not have enough food, then it will not be able to produce much food so make sure that your fruit tree is getting appropriate nutrients. So it is very important to supply appropriate fertilizer and trace elements to the plant at correct time.
Use a complete fertilizer having with correct ratios of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K) developed for fruit trees. For mango tree, avoid fertilizer high in nitrogen, too much nitrogen will damage flowers. But deficiency of nitrogen in orange and mandarin trees may result fruit drop. Fertilize your fruit tree with a higher P and K ratio a fertilizer.
Regularly add organic compost in soil, specially before flowering.
4. Pest and Disease
The fruits on tree may fall due to some tree diseases. Pests and diseases on tree may be the reason of premature fruit drop [3]. Premature fruit drop often occurs in trees like mangoes, plums (grow plums from seeds), nectarines (grow nectarine tree from seed), apples (grow apple tree from seed) and pears (grow pear tree from seed) that are infested with insects larvae. The fruit may starts to rot because of a pest, so you need to get rid of pests by using neem oil spray or using soap water spray or some other treatment.
Fungal disease such as anthracnose, sooty mold and powdery mildew [3] on the tree can cause premature dropping of mango fruit.
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| Disease on Fruit can cause dropping of fruit. |
Anthracnose Disease
The anthracnose disease is the most common disease that attacks flower panicles and all parts of the tree, resulting in less or no fruiting. Due to anthracnose, the infected fruits drop early from the tree like on a mango tree and the fruit that initially appears unaffected develops black spots upon ripening. Also the leaves show black spots causing them to fall.
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| Anthracnose Disease Causes Black Spots on Leaves and Fruit Drop |
Powdery Mildew Disease
Due to powdery mildew fruit, foliage and stems are covered with a white powdery substance on leaves and fruit during bloom. High winds at the time of fruit set can drop fruits of size less than 10 millimeter.
Fungal Disease Treatment
Prune dead branches and leaves from the tree to avoid spread of disease.
Keep the area around the plant as weed free as possible. Dispose of all the fallen diseased twigs, leaves and fruits on the ground and all the infected parts of the plant in the rubbish or burn them (how to treat black spots on mango tree). Do not put them in compost bin.
If the tree is already affected by anthracnose or powdery mildew infection, then you have to destroy the affected parts it is too late to spray for these now, they cannot be treated.
Use a fungicide to prevent the fungal problems in the future, spray trees when they begin to form flower spikes. For anthracnose, spray a copper fungicide and use a sulfur fungicide for powdery mildew.
5. Fruit Falling, a Natural Process
Fruit falling from a tree is a natural process. The initial falling of fruit is quite common due to overbearing of fruit and not due to any insects or other problem because dropping of some fruits is a normal thinning process of the tree to properly utilize the available nutrients.
The immature fruits are all competing for the available food and water. The strongest will survive. This results in more fruit on the ground than on the tree.
You can thin out the fruits on the tree to get large size and sweet fruits. How much to thin depends upon the individual tree. Thin out the peaches and nectarines by pulling them off when they are about 1 inch in size, leaving one fruit every 6 inches.
Prevention and Control of Fruit Dropping
The natural question is how to prevent premature fruit drop from the tree?
If you can identify the causes of your premature shedding of the fruit, then you can try to isolate the cause and prevent or treat fruit drop from tree.
Spray of Hormones
The fruit drop from a tree can be stopped by spraying some hormones like Naphthalene Acetic Acid (NAA) and Gibberellic acid (GA3) on flowers. These are the most effective for increasing fruit set, fruit retention, fruit weight and yield.
Spray of Pest Oil
The fruit drop can be prevented by spraying the flowers with eco oil or pest oil, every week on flowers and already growing fruit. Continue this until the fruits grow to a large size, stop the spray at least 2 weeks before you intend to cut the fruits from the tree.
References
1. Nkansah, G.O. and T. Ito, 1995. Effect of air and root-zone temperatures on physiological characters and yield of heat-tolerant and non heat-tolerant tomato plants grown at different root-zone temperatures, J. Jpn. Soc. Hort. Sci., 64: 315-320. Article
2. KK Misra and Shweta Uniyal, Causes and Control of Fruit Drop in Fruit Crops, Environment & Ecology 30(3), 537-543 , 2012. PDF