It almost looks like catfacing from Stinkbug damage, but a bit early in the year for that?
I agree that it looks like “cat-facing”—scarring and deformation from insect sucking (and/or egg-laying) damage. In addition to stinkbugs, thrips, lygus bugs and other insects can also do this.
I’m also in Georgia 7b, and I’ve already seen stinkbugs. Though that looks nothing like plum curculio damage, a lot of my apples and pears have PC damage too, perhaps because I sprayed my peaches and plums for PC but not my apples and pears.
I was hoping they might make it even if they have marks.
What about late frost russet? Here’s the only pic I could find
I think that’s it. Here’s is more info.
Young apples and pears that are cold-injured often develop a brown-colored frost ring around the fruit later in the growing season but are still edible (Figure 1).
It looks more like rust to me - last year was particularly bad and most of my asian pear fruit had it. Those deformities later erupt into little orange or white spikes that are the fungus fruiting bodies. It’s similar to Cedar Apple Rust but a different fungus that causes pear rust. This year I still have more pear rust than usual, but I’m thinning the infected fruit and should still have plenty of fruit. Some of my trees are more affected than others - Keiffer and Shinko have the most, Shin Li and Korean Giant much less.
How many fruit look like that? What do the leaves look like? Anything else unusual besides the fruit?
Leaves normal. I have two Asian pear only one tree has these mark they are twenty feet from each other
Looks like rust lesions to me as well. They’ve just not erupted their fungal fruiting bodies yet.
@GeorgiaGent Here are some examples of what I think is probably the same problem (rust at an early stage) that I thinned from my Asian pear.
Yeah my first guess was rust because I get it on service berry and looks similar. I didn’t know Asian pears have rust problems too.
Serviceberries seem much more susceptible to rust than pears! I really like serviceberries, but I didn’t want to have to spray them for rust. I sprayed them for three years, and that was the only way to get edible fruit, so I finally gave up on them here. I tried several cultivars that were supposed to be more resistant, but I didn’t see any difference.
Fortunately, rust generally hasn’t been so bad on Asian pears - last year was exceptionally bad. We had a hard frost right when they were in full bloom, and I think that might have made them more vulnerable than usual. This year hasn’t been as bad, but still a bit worse than I’ve seen prior to last year.