Sunscald in Pumpkins (2020) - 1 page

Sunscald in Pumpkins

Scenario - a hard frost in early September kills the foliage of a pumpkin crop. Initially, the fruit look to have escaped damage - but after two weeks of curing in the field many of the fruit start to develop problems ( see the fruit on the right).

Symptoms - superficially, the symptoms look like frost damage - with shrunken tissues mostly commonly on the exposed upper surfaces of the fruit. As in frost damage, the problem is more severe on young fruit and thin-skinned cultivars.

However the symptoms were not like frost damage in that …

a) the lesions did not show up until 2-3 weeks after the frost event - whereas frost damage typically shows up within hours of the event and …

b) the affected tissues did not immediately start to rot down .. as they typically do after frost.

The problem was actually sunscald.