An endophyte, not an invader: it enters early and waits for stress. Why water stress two to six months after infection is what decides the damage, why the water-only control matched every fungicide in the 2008 trial, and what actually works, pruning, post-harvest irrigation and cultivar choice.
Ascospore release starts at petal fall and lasts six to eight weeks. Five hours of wetness at 17-20 C are enough. Why the programme does not begin after harvest.
The mealybug hides on the peduncle, beneath the leaf-like calyx, so the infestation is invisible until grading. Why it is Pseudococcus comstocki and not Planococcus citri, how a hand lens tells them apart, and why that changes the spray from August to the April hatch.
The most demanding of the stone fruits. Cultivar choice, the suggested sprays by phenological stage, leaf curl and its single treatment window, fertiliser programmes, and what is done after harvest.
A subtropical species with high soil requirements, trained on a T-bar or a pergola, expensive to run and unforgiving of poor technique. Soil, water and nutrition, where the vine fruits, pollination as the decisive factor, the operations and sprays by phenological stage, bacterial canker, the calcium window and the harvest indices.
The serrated ovipositor that lets it attack sound fruit, up to 13 generations a year and 300 eggs per female, why males go sterile at 30 °C, and why traps detect but never control.
Cracking is three different disorders, not one, and the classical burst-balloon model is wrong. What the cuticle, the pedicel and the timing of calcium actually do.
The most important fungal disease of walnut in Greece, found on almost every holding and capable of taking the whole crop. The correct name of the pathogen, the scale of the losses, differential diagnosis, the temperatures and humidity it needs, cultivar susceptibility and where Chandler stands, and the cultural measures without which the sprays do not hold.
The bacterium that manufactures the frost wounds it then invades through. The knife test that separates infectious from non-infectious gummosis, the nematode complex, why copper hydroxide works and copper oxide does not, and the entry point most often missed in young trees.
Nine consecutive seasons of observation in the Giannitsa area of Pella: ripening order, fruit size, cracking tolerance, self-fertility and behaviour on each rootstock for twenty varieties, each one with its breeder and the holder of its rights.
Half of the nitrogen used in spring does not come from the soil but from the previous season's reserves, which is why the base dressing almost always goes on at the wrong moment. Where the nitrogen comes from in spring, how much of the fertiliser is taken up by season, storage and the autumn transfer from leaves to buds, and what that means for the programme.
Sweet cherry is attacked by a range of viruses and none of them can be cured once a tree is infected. PNRSV, PDV and their synergy, the rusty mottle group, little cherry, ACLSV, CVA and CRLV: transmission routes, what has been found in Greece, sampling and diagnosis.
