This is a well known disease in fruit trees. I am sharing with you my limited experience with gummosis on one of our Satsuma trees and how I am treating it.
In simple terms, foot rot gummosis in citrus occurs when zoospores splash into wound or bark crack around the trunk base. Zoospores travel thru rain and/or irrigation, contact the roots, germinate and cause root rot. They can affect other parts of tree but this discussion is limited to disease on citrus trunk bases.
Upon initial inspection I thought deer had damaged the trunk (and they may very well have wounded the tree) but excessive rains are probably more of a factor, encouraging zoospore travel. Once I noticed orangey sap oozing from the base I knew this needed further attention. It is a contagious disease so prompt attention is important.
Here are two pics of what the base of my Satsuma looked like:
FOOT ROT GUMMOSIS - CITRUS
The hardest part (not really hard) was to sit as close as possible to the base of the trunk so I could scrape all the soft and dead tissue, as well as any sap. I scraped until I felt firm tissue. In my case, there was not much scraping to do. After scraping, I thoroughly sprayed the area with the fungicide. Here are two pics of how the trunk looked post scraping
This message was edited Jul 20, 2016 2:44 PM
I will post an update on the success of my treatment of choice. My tree is under 10 years old and I saw no evidence of damage in foliage, branches, fruit--just the base of the trunk.
Here are two links I found useful when researching gummosis:
http://www.idtools.org/id/citrus/diseases/factsheet.php?name=Phytophthora
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/citrus/l2313.htm
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