Glossary · Orchard
Canker
Also written apple canker, European canker. Each is a name for the same thing, which is why none of them has an entry of its own.
Definition
A fungal disease, caused by Neonectria ditissima, that forms sunken, cracked lesions on branches and trunks, girdling and killing the wood beyond them.
- Subject
- Orchard
- Also written
- apple canker, European canker
In more detail
Canker enters through wounds — pruning cuts, leaf scars, frost cracks and scab lesions — and is worst on heavy, wet soils. Management is cultural before it is chemical: drainage, resistant cultivars, cutting out infected wood well below the lesion, and timing pruning for dry weather.
Some important cider cultivars are notably susceptible, which affects where they can be grown as much as any quality consideration.
Where this is covered properly
The glossary defines; these pages explain. Each is described in its own words.
Microbiology
Neonectria ditissima
The fungus that causes European apple canker, a tree disease that kills branches and whole young trees and shortens the productive life of an orchard.
Production
Pest and disease management
Keeping scab, canker, rots and the main insect pests to a level the orchard can carry, at a cosmetic standard well below dessert fruit but without allowing rot into the crop.
Related terms
Terms that belong to the same part of the subject, or that this one is routinely confused with.
Orchard
Scab
A fungal disease, caused by *Venturia inaequalis*, producing olive-brown blotches on leaves and corky, cracked lesions on fruit. It reduces yield, disfigures fruit and opens the way for rots.
Orchard
Fireblight
A bacterial disease of apples and especially pears that blackens blossom and shoots as though scorched, killing branches rapidly and sometimes whole trees.
Orchard
Pruning
The removal of wood to shape a tree, control its size, admit light to the fruiting zone and renew bearing wood. Formative pruning builds the framework; renewal pruning maintains it.
Orchard
Orchard floor
The ground layer beneath the trees, and its management: permanent grazed grassland in traditional orchards, mown alleys with herbicide strips in intensive ones.
Where to go next
- Cider glossary — The whole vocabulary, by subject and A–Z.
- Comparisons — Terms that are only really clear when set against the thing they are not.
- Search — Finds terms by their aliases and by their spellings in other languages.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
NIAB (incorporating East Malling Research)
NIAB · research institute · retrieved 2026-08-24
East Malling developed the M-series apple rootstocks that determine tree size in essentially every modern orchard, cider orchards included. The authority CiderHQ uses for rootstock behaviour.