ChileanJAR

The production of nuts and stone fruits is of gieat importance to Chile, due to the high quality and value of these crops. For this reason the large seedling losses in nurseries and new orchards have greatly concerned the producers as well as the technicians.
A large number of newlyestablished nurseries and orchards in the fruitgrowing area of the country were visited. It was determined that the average annual loss of plants reached 30%, and in the northern part of the country several small nurseries were totally destroyed.
The objective of this work was to determine the cause of the death of these trees and to isolate ana identify the organisms in the diseased plants in order to test their pathogenicity.
The fungi isolated from the roots and crowns of diseased peaches, almonds and apricots wereidentified as: Fusarium oxysporum Sch., Pythiurn interrnediurn De Bary, Pythium debaryanum Hesse, Rhyzoctonia solani Kühn and Phytophthora cactorum (L y C) Schroeter. These fungi are capable of causing the death of the above mentioned plants.