Weird Nectarine Fruit Damage

As you can see in the attached two pictures, my nectarines (variety 'Arctic Star') are heavily damaged. Every fruit on the tree shows the same kind of damage. Nearby peach trees are unaffected. This is the second year in a row that this tree (planted in January 2008) has exhibited this damage. I had a tiny harvest of good fruit in 2010 and 2011, none in 2011 or 2012 due to freezes, then this damage this year and last. I thought a late freeze might have caused the damage last year, but there was no freeze or frost this year.

The tree is in full sun and is in seemingly identical soil to the other peach trees that are very close by. Again, all other peaches look fine.

I see no obvious insect issue. The fruit is presently small-grape to cherry size--and very hard. It should be at least golf ball sized by now, so in addition to the damage, growth is stunted. The tree itself looks perfectly healthy. The skin of the fruit is "cat-faced" and seems to me to have what look like brownish/tan sugar crystals all over. I am at a loss for ideas--help!

Thanks.

A sucking insect, maybe aphids, I surmise. Have you seen any aphids? At times, they are hard to spot. Do you follow a spray program for your fruits?

Adam--I'm pretty sure it isn't aphids--no insect of any kind is visible anywhere on the tree. I do know what aphids look like, so that gives me more confidence to say it isn't aphids. Also, the fact that no other tree is affected leads me away from the insect idea, unless it's an insect that, say, bored into the tree and is now "invisible". Then again, the tree looks quite healthy. It's like it's the tree produces damaged fruit, as opposed to good fruit that later gets damaged. The small fruits in the photos are smaller than a grape.

I do spray with hort oil and did this year just before blooming started--late Jan or early Feb. Otherwise, no spraying of any kind.

Adam-again (pun intended) I did some searches for peaches and aphids based on your comments. I don't think it is/was aphids, but I started looking for cat facing of peaches and stumbled into a paper on thrips damage. The photos from a search (thrip damage to peaches--hit images) there look a lot like my problem, whereas just searching for "peaches cat facing" produces photos that look nothing like my problem. A thrip problem makes some sense as this nectarine is by far the earliest bloomer and just may well hit a thrip wave that is gone by the time other trees blossom. The thrips evidently hit after blossoming and thus avoid the horticultural oil application. They are piercing/sucking critters, so your comment appears to have hit the nail on the head. Also, thrips is apparently singular and plural, so you can have just one thrips!

Anyone out there who can confirm these suspicions?

This message was edited Apr 29, 2014 4:15 PM

It is some sort or piercing sucking insect. Thrips, scale, aphids, leaf hoppers, white flies or psyllids pretty much would cover most of them.

Do you have plum curculios?

Not sure about curculios--drobarr. Whatever is happening is happening pre-shucksplit, I'm pretty sure. From the time fruit is visible--bb size--the damage is done. And only this one tree--which blooms earlier than every other tree in my yard. I am leaning towards thrips.

http://www.caf.wvu.edu/kearneysville/disease_descriptions/ombrownr.html

The sugar crystals make me wonder about brown rot disease.