Organism
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.
Also called European apple canker, Nectria galligena, Neonectria galligena.
- Kind
- Mould
- Binomial
- Neonectria ditissima
- Role
- Present throughout
What it does
- Infects woody tissue through wounds — pruning cuts, leaf scars at autumn leaf fall, bud scale scars, frost and hail damage — and kills the bark and cambium around the entry point, forming a sunken, elliptical canker with concentric ridges.
- Girdles branches as the canker expands, killing everything distal to it; on a young tree a canker at the graft union or trunk can kill the tree outright.
- Releases conidia in wet weather and ascospores from perithecia over a longer period, so infection risk tracks rainfall and is highest around leaf fall.
- Causes a fruit rot as well, entering through the eye of the fruit and rotting it in store, though the tree damage is the greater economic problem.
Conditions it works in
What the organism tolerates and what suppresses it. These are the levers a maker actually has: temperature, acidity, air, alcohol and sulphite.
| Condition | What is recorded |
|---|---|
| Temperature | Infects across a wide range, with the greatest risk during the mild, wet conditions of a northern European autumn. |
| Oxygen | Aerobic; entirely a tree and fruit organism with no role in fermentation. |
Faults it causes
Faults this organism is implicated in. Several are faults only against a particular expectation — the same activity is a signature elsewhere.
Where in the process it appears
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.
Pruning
The recurring cut made on a cropping tree to keep light in the canopy, renew fruiting wood, hold the balance between growth and fruit, and take out disease and deadwood.
Orchard planting
The establishment operation itself — tree quality, timing, planting depth, support and protection — which decides whether a young orchard grows away in its first two seasons or never catches up.
Replanting and orchard renewal
Replacing an orchard at the end of its life or filling its gaps as they appear, and dealing with the specific problem of planting apple where apple has already stood.
Site selection
Choosing the ground an orchard will stand on, weighing frost drainage, exposure, soil depth and season length decades before the first full crop is picked.
Soil and drainage
Assessing and correcting soil depth, structure, pH and water movement so that orchard roots get both water and air across a wet winter and a dry summer.
Rootstock choice
Selecting the root system a cider cultivar is grafted onto, which fixes tree size, how soon it crops, how long it lives and what soil and orchard system it will tolerate.
About Neonectria ditissima
Apple canker is the disease that shapes the economics of an orchard rather than the flavour of a cider. Neonectria ditissima — long known as Nectria galligena, and the older name is still widely used — infects wood through wounds and kills the tissue around the point of entry. A canker that girdles a branch kills the branch; one on a young trunk kills the tree, and replanting losses in a newly planted orchard on a wet site can be severe.
Its relevance to cider is therefore indirect and real. Canker pressure influences which sites can be planted, which cultivars are viable there, how orchards are pruned and when, and how long a planting remains productive. Wet western sites — the same maritime climate that suits cider fruit in England, Wales, Normandy and Asturias — are the sites where canker is worst, which is not a coincidence a cider platform should leave unstated.
A note on the schema: the `role` vocabulary in CiderHQ’s organism model is built around fermentation, and it has no category for an orchard pathogen. This record is filed as `ubiquitous` because none of the fermentation roles apply and because the organism is genuinely widespread in humid apple-growing regions, but the honest description is that it never enters the cider at all.
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- How should a cider tree be pruned
- What makes a good site for a cider orchard — Frost drainage first, then soil depth and water. A hollow that traps cold air on a May night can lose a crop at blossom, and no later decision recovers it.
- What rootstock should i use for cider apples — Rootstock sets tree size, how soon it crops and how long it lives. Traditional standard orchards used vigorous or seedling stocks for large, long-lived trees; modern bush orchards use semi-dwarfing stocks that crop early and can be machine-harvested.
- What is mould taint in cider
Where to go next
- All organisms — Grouped by what each does in the ferment, and by what kind of organism it is.
- Compounds — The chemistry this microbiology produces.
- Troubleshooting — Work from the symptom in the glass back to the organism.
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.