What is wrong with my pomegranates? The leaves and the bark look great, but there are brown specs all over the skin of the fruit, and the fruit gradually becomes completely brown instead of red. Also, when I cut the fruit open, the fruit is extremely dry inside, with no juice at all.
I live in Texas, and during the spring this year, iit rained about once a week for three straight months, from about April 1st until the end of June. But now it is the dry season, so it hasn’t rained at all since the end of June, and it probably won’t rain much until September.
Do you think the fruit has fungus which was caused by too much rain during the spring? Or is the fruit “scalded” from too much sun?
I’d like to hear people’s opinions because I love pomegranates, but now all the fruit is completely inedible.
Here is a picture of several more fruit which I picked yesterday. (I took this picture immediately after picking the fruit, so the brown specs are definitely not because of the fruit going bad. In fact, all of the brown specs were on the fruit when the fruit was still on the tree.)
I don’t know the answer to your browning problem. It’s likely that someone else here will, though. I’m glad that you’re aware that those aren’t ripe, yet. You can’t expect far from ripe fruit to be juicy or tasty. Those seed sacs need time to fill out.
If they were mine, I’d leave any others on there unless someone who could reliably diagnose the problem informed me that it was something that would spread if not removed. Some apples and pears become very russetted, but their flavor is still good.
I’m looking forward to learning the answers to your questions, myself, especially if it will help you have a better harvest next year.
To answer the question about how the fruit was in the past: I moved here only two years ago (in July 2014), so I am not the one who planted the pomegranate trees, and I have no idea what species they are. In 2014 as well as 2015, I had the same problem. All the fruit got more and more brown specs until the fruit gradually became completely brown. No fruit ever became red.
Is it normal for pomegranate to have brown specs all over the fruit before becoming ripe?
I have had a small crop of about 5 or so pomegranates for several years now and have always lost most to rot. This years I have a large crop and almost all have rot much worse than yours, I even sprayed a fungicide a couple of times for the first year ever. We have had lots of rain and humidity and they just don’t handle that very well. I have had fruit that had spots like yours that were good, just cosmetic. I don’t think we will ever have beautiful fruit in the Southeast, I just hope for something edible.
Here is a picture of my fruit that is truly rotted. Rot starts at the bottom of the fruit and works its way up. Yours don’t look that bad to me.
I’m fairly certain that not all pomegranate varieties turn red. Perhaps this is one of those…
Did they ever become edible, last year - even though you may have been ‘turned off’ by the appearance of the ‘skin’? If so… who cares what the outside looks like… you don’t eat it!
Both Alternaria Fruit Rot and Aspergillus Fruit Rot can result in “brownish-red discoloration” and are associated with wet weather “during flowering and early fruit development”.
I’m not personally familiar with these diseases, so I’m not in a position to confirm that your fruit is affected by one of these rots. It can be just a normal coloration of this particular variety, as people suggested above. I would wait until fruits are ripe and then check whether a fungus affected the arils inside the fruit.
Yours actually looks a lot like their Gainey Sweet. If it’s not damaged in any way… you’ve probably got a really nice heirloom that you should preserve. Definitely interested in seeing pics when it ripens!
Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I might be wrong, but I think my pomegranate are probably not infected with Alternaria Fruit Rot or Aspergillus Fruit Rot because I have looked at pictures of infected fruit using Google Images, and it showed lots of pictures of leaves which had spots all over them, but my leaves are fine without absolutely no spots at all. The spots are only on the fruit, not on the leaves or the bark.
Tiger, in your pictures, I can see that the rot in your fruit covers only a patch of the fruit, not the whole fruit. Also, you said that the rot starts at the bottom and works its way up. That’s different than my problem because for me, the brown spots are all over the surface of the fruit, and they aren’t in “patches” like they are on your fruit.
Ross, maybe you are right that my pomegranates are Gainey Sweet because the fruit which is in the picture at that website looks similar to my fruit.
When I cut open my fruit, I’ve noticed that even though the skin of the fruit is covered with brown dots, there are no brown areas at all inside the fruit, so maybe there isn’t really a fungal infection like I originally thought.
I’ll wait about a month for the fruit to get ripe, and then I’ll post new pictures at the forum here so you-all can see what the fruit looks like when it’s ripe. (However, I’ve already picked most of the fruit because I thought it was infected, so unfortunately, there won’t be much fruit left to pick a month later.)
Like others have said the pomegranates you are showing are raw. pomegranates can range from eye candy to eye sore. Yet unless you let them fully ripen you’d never know. That thing at the top of the photo you posted, looks like a crown. If it was fully ripe the points would be much closer. Sometimes even touching. Did you buy or inherit the pomegranate bush?
Those poms have some type of problem, either a disease or an insect problem. Even if its not affecting the interior, it’s still a very real defect. Considering your rain and humidity it may very well be a fungal problem. It is not caused by the sun.
