Blueberry harvest has winded down, but the blueberry bush leaves have not yet fallen. About ~80% of the mummies in the field are still on the bushes. Although, if jostled, they will readily detach and fall to the ground. A common cultural control measure used during the summer season is to harvest mummies along with blueberry fruit, then to sort the mummies and dispose of them. Farmers in the Pacific Northwest have reported that this control measure is a great way to reduce inoculum in the field.
This is the beginning of the overwintering stage of Mummy Berry. Below is a depiction of the Mummy Berry life cycle.
Did you know?
Although mummies are called pseudosclerotia in some scientific literature, they are actually true sclerotia. According to Ainsworth and Bisby’s Dictionary of the Fungi, “a sclerotium is a firm, frequently rounded, mass of hyphae with or without the addition of host tissue or soil, normally having no spores in or on it, and may give rise to a fruiting body. In Sclerotium Germination and Histopathology of Monilinia vaccinii-corymbosi on Highbush Blueberry by R.D. Milholland, it is also stated that “The [mummy berry] overwintering sclerotium is composed almost entirely of fungus tissue.”
