Fruit splitting or cracking
Fruit opening along a seam or across the skin, usually close to ripening. What matters is not the split but what is inside it: a clean fresh crack after rain is a water event and the fruit is still worth picking, while a split that has gone brown, soft or furry is a rot that will spread to the fruit touching it.
When this is urgent
Split fruit that has turned brown and grown grey-buff pustules is brown rot. Left hanging, the mummified fruit carries the fungus through the winter and reinfects next year's crop, so removing it matters more than anything done to the tree.
Described view
Three apples on one surface with a scale reference: one split cleanly along a fresh crack with pale unblemished flesh showing, one carrying the corky olive-brown scab lesions that crack the skin as the fruit expands, and one with the concentric buff pustule rings of brown rot spreading from a wound
What causes it, and how to tell them apart
Work down the list making the observation under each heading. GrowingHQ will not guess which one you have — the observation is the answer.
- Fruit splittingvery common
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Fruit splitting
Checked 2026-08-13
How to tell
The splits are clean and fresh, appeared within a day or two of heavy rain or a thorough watering after a dry spell, and the flesh inside is sound. Fruit close to ripe splits and fruit still swelling usually does not.
source
Horticultural consensusmoderate confidence
No external citation — see the evidence type above.
Checked 2026-08-13
If it is this, do first
Pick the split fruit and use it straight away — it is perfectly good, it simply will not keep. Nothing applied to the tree prevents this; even watering through the swelling period is the only real lever, and on an established tree in the open there is not much of one.
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Fruit splitting
Checked 2026-08-13
- Brown rotcommon
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Brown rot
Checked 2026-08-13
How to tell
The split has gone soft and brown, often with concentric rings of buff-coloured pustules, and neighbouring fruit touching it is going the same way. A split from rain alone stays firm and pale at the edges.
source
Horticultural consensusmoderate confidence
No external citation — see the evidence type above.
Checked 2026-08-13
If it is this, do first
Remove every affected fruit including the mummified ones still hanging, and dispose of them rather than composting. The fungus overwinters in those and reinfects through wounds next season, so clearing them is the single most effective thing available.
source
Sourced guidancehigh confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Brown rot — control
Checked 2026-08-13
- Underwateringcommon
source
Sourced guidancemoderate confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Watering fruit trees
Checked 2026-08-13
How to tell
The tree is in a container or against a wall, the soil has been dry for a stretch, and the splitting followed the first proper watering. Irregular supply rather than too much water is what does this.
source
Horticultural consensusmoderate confidence
No external citation — see the evidence type above.
Checked 2026-08-13
If it is this, do first
Water more often and less heavily rather than soaking a dry rootball, and mulch to hold what is there. A tree in a pot or a wall border cannot buffer a dry fortnight the way one in open ground can.
source
Sourced guidancemoderate confidence
- Royal Horticultural Society: Watering fruit trees
Checked 2026-08-13
Where GrowingHQ holds more for one plant
This page lists the causes across every plant. The plants below are the ones where something about that plant changes the answer — different candidates, or a different observation that separates them.
Fruit
- Apple: fruit splitting or cracking — 3 candidates specific to apple
- Apricot: fruit splitting or cracking — 2 candidates specific to apricot
- Cherry: fruit splitting or cracking — 2 candidates specific to cherry
- Grape: fruit splitting or cracking — 2 candidates specific to grape
- Plum: fruit splitting or cracking — 2 candidates specific to plum