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Originally Posted by Merlin
I have two very productive quince trees, however a large proportion of
the fruit is affected by a "problem". The skin has largish numbers of
tiny black / grey dots and when you cut (hack!) the fruit open the
inside is heavily veined with brown to such an extent that 50%+ of the
fruit mass is brown and because it's veined that makes 100% of the fruit
mass useless.
Does anyone recognise this condition and can anyone put a name to it?
And ideally of course, I'd like to know what I can do to prevent it in
future.
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Couple of checks, sorry if this insults your intelligence:
1) You have Cydonia (true quince - looks like a pear tree, with pinkish white flowers in May) not Chaenomeles (Japanese "quince" - thorny shrub with brightly coloured flowers, usually red but other colours available, in late winter/early spring)
2) You picked the fruit before the serious frosts
Both the quince tree at my previous garden (Vranja) and my present one (Meech's Prolific) have a tendency to produce fruit with some light brown marbling in the flesh, usually in stripes at an angle to the internal stem, and not extending all the way to the skin. I find that this does not affect the cooking quality, and cooking the flesh in lemon juice and water the browning goes by the time the flesh is fully cooked. But I also find that any damage to the fruit, insect or bruising, which they are fortunately not prone to, or frost, causes the fruit to rot very quickly, much faster than other fruit. Discard all damaged fruit.
I read that quinces are quite prone to various rusts, ie fungal complaints, including ones that pears are prone to, and some extra just for you. I got one in 2004, which caused much blistering on the leaves and a swelling in the stem to the developing fruit, and all the fruit eventually aborted. After much searching, I discovered that this is "quince rust", which is only to be found mentioned in the very fattest encyclopedias of fruit tree diseases. This is actually a far more serious pest of cypress trees, especially in the US, and most of the information I found was about cypresses. It passes between cypress and quince, and can travel about a mile. In the case of the quince being affected, once you have it you are stuck with it for that year, though it is a good idea to remove all affected leaves and fruits. The following year, spray the tree with a SYSTEMIC fungicide after leaf burst but before flowering. Also a good idea to spray apple and pear trees which are also mildly prone to it - there was some evidence that an adjacent pear tree had been somewhat affected. I spotted a sickly cypress that was a potential suspect in the grounds of a stately home a couple of miles from my house. The spraying was effective in that I didn't get the disease in 2005. I didn't spray this year, mainly because the leaves came out very late and I didn't get in there before the flowers came, but it didn't recur.
This is evidently not the same as you have, but it indicates that some seemingly awful rusts in quince can be controlled, and in general a systemic antifungal spray on newly emerging leaves before flowering seems like a good idea if you have a rust problem.