North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Heron Breen <breen@fedcoseeds.com>]

Pardon my ignorance, but is KSD an issue in Asia? Is anyone doing research on 
this 
phenomenon? Wondering if my friend's Japanese language skills could be of 
use...
Heron Breen 
On Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:29:23 EDT , Jwlehman@aol.com sent:

>Hello all,
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>It is highly unlikely that there is any connection between Fireblight and 
Persimmon Wilt. Fireblight is a fungus, Erwinia Amylovora and Persimmon wilt, 
Cephalosporium diospyri. The spraying of agri-mycin and captan and the 
symptoms 
stopping is likely coincidental. 
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>The cause of Kaki Sudden Death (KSD) is as some else wrote still unknown. My 
personal belief is the shepherd hooking is more a symptom of dying kaki 
regardless 
of the cause. I've also head reports that KSD was stopped by spraying 
Micronutrients and the symptoms appeared. I suspect that too was 
coincidental. 
Manganese poisoning is still unproven but possible as well as winter cold 
damage. 
I've also seen reports of KSD on kaki seedlings.  Which would tend to reduce 
the 
virginiana understock involvement, but not eliminate it's contributing to a 
cause 
or causes. 
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>Kelly Jackson from Mississippi planted 550 grafted kaki trees to establish a 
commercial kaki orchard some years back. She lives near Memphis, TN just 
south of 
the Mississippi border. I asked her about Fireblight in her area, here was 
her 
response:
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>>>I know nothing about any [Fire] blight in my area to corollate.
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>Few of my 550 Jiro and Ichi Kei Kai Jiro persimmon trees are still alive.
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>The only way one of my  trees lives "with"  their virus is to send up root 
>stock.
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>(Three of the trees that you grafted still live, but they are not Jiro 
>Persimmon 
trees.)
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>It is still my opinion that my orchard does not have American Kaki wilt 
>disease.
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>It has Sudden Kaki Death syndrome, which is totally fatal once the tree is 
infected. Some trees just "last" longer than others before total death of the 
graft.
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>Sudden Kaki Death syndrome is not fatal to the root stock if it is an 
>American 
cultivar.<<
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>The grafts which I made which she writes about was Jiro wood which I 
>personally 
cut from the UC Davis orchard where KSD never has been a problem. That scion 
wood 
should have been clean of whatever causes it, if a disease. I grafted some of 
them 
on American persimmon seedlings located near her dying orchard that have 
never 
been grafted before, they should have been clean of disease brought on with 
contaminated scion wood. They should have lived a few years, but didn't. Most 
started showing typical KSD symptoms the following spring. 
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>Sorry to be of no help.
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>Jerry
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