Macroblight

Transmission & Vectors

Macroblight is a fungal infection of certain fleshy fruit plants; infection by macroblight causes the fruit to roughly double in size but become infested with spores. The fruit has a tendency to burst, spreading large, stringy spores that can infest nearby fruit plants when spread by the wind. It was at one point hypothesized that the fruits were made larger in order to be more attractive to foraging animals, who would then disperse spores through their dung, but researchers found no evidence of spores surviving digestion.
Known fruits infected by macroblight include the common orange, kumquat, mango, papaya, and pear, as well as their many variants. Berries are not colonized by blight, nor are bananas or melons.

Causes

Once a spore lands to rest on the surface of a fruit, it grows filaments into the fruit and begins to consume the flesh of the fruit in order to produce more spores. On windfallen fruit, the flesh of the fruit is simply slowly consumed by macroblight, in a process no different from ordinary rot. On fruit still attached to the plant, the filaments somehow trigger the plant to cause the fruit to grow far larger than what would be normal, though this depends on which type of fruit is infested. As the fruit grows larger and larger, new spores begin to emerge from the skin of the fruit, to be picked up by the wind.

Symptoms

Macroblighted fruits are obviously diseased; they tend to be discolored and gigantic, and advanced infestation sees the emergence of the characteristic 'white hairs' of new spores on the fruit's skin. Macroblight does not directly harm the plant itself, however, although heavily blighted trees can die due to the additional nutrients needed by the spores for their spread. A blighted grove often has patches of macroblight growing in proximity to each other, and infestations follow wind patterns.
No obvious symptoms or disease occurs when animals or people eat blighted fruit, but the spores are foul-tasting and malodorous.

Treatment

There is no specific treatment for rendering a fruit safe; a blighted fruit must be destroyed, either by crushing and burial or by fire. If blight is suspected, a tree can be denuded of its fruit in order to ensure its survival, but sufficiently blighted groves are typically burned wholesale to prevent spore spread and the ground tilled to destroy any active spores in the soil.

Prognosis

While individual plants can be cleared of infestation readily enough, purging an orchard of the macroblight without destroying it is nearly impossible; once an infestation takes hold, clearing blight off of one grove of trees would only result in more blighted trees appearing the next grove over. Denuding the entire orchard may work, but spores linger in soil, and any infestation upstream would result in a re-introduction of blight in the next growing season. 
In terms of economic agriculture, the presence of macroblight is almost certainly a total loss of crop for the season (and a headache for Etoilean Term Insurance), and the farm at hand typically replaces their orchards with non-fruiting plants (grains) for the next few seasons.

Prevention

At the small scale, fruit plants can simply be covered with a fine net or thin cloth to prevent spores from landing on the plant, if an infestation is known to be in the area. For plants that are too large to cover in this way, regular inspection of the fruit as it grows and removal of suspected infested fruit is enough to prevent an infestation taking hold.
At the large scale (fruit farm operations), it is imperative that the source of the infestation is found upwind and destroyed, if spores are noted to be landing in an area. It is relatively rare that dense numbers of fruiting trees are found in the wilderness, so tracing the winds and hunting and destroying macroblight infestations upstream can prevent it taking hold in an orchard. Wholly infested orchards, on the other hand, endanger agriculture for tens of miles around the area, and the Principality of Etoile will heavily fine any farmer or Consortium that allows a macroblight infestation to go unnoticed.

Epidemiology

Because macroblight only infests fruit and is carried by the wind, tracing macroblight infestations is relatively straightforward. All blight infestations can be traced to an upwind infected tree, which itself stood victim to another tree farther upwind, and so forth. Etoilean Rangers monitor forests for signs of blight and can request work crews to clear infestations in wild groves.
During the Fourth Season there is typically very little fruiting activity in the wild. Wild macroblight typically starts being spotted late in First Season and must be actively culled through the various fruiting seasons all the way through the end of Third Season.

History

Macroblight is a fungal plant disease native to Raefel Island, but it has been present on the mainland of western Saibh for hundreds of years, and records of its presence date back all the way through to the beginnings of the petty kingdom era. As it does not affect grain supplies, however, it posed no risk of famine. It was only during the era of the Principality, after The War of Unification, that it began to be considered a serious agricultural problem due to the rise of large farming estates and tracts run by various consortiums, including the Unified Trade Consortium. The first major epidemic of macroblight occurred in 640, when the disease ravaged orchards all across the Principality; oranges and mangos that year were impossible to find in marketplaces, and so much blight was being spread by orchards that farmers could accurately describe the spores as 'raining' on their fields.
The remediation of macroblight was given as the first major task to The Academy of Etoile, and Academy scholars relied on fire during the Fourth Season of 640 to ensure that the plantings in 641 would avoid destruction. Whole swathes of farmland were burned and tilled, forests inundated with spores has their ground cover intentionally lit on fire, and the disease was finally traced to Raefel, where it is present in constant but low quantities. Extermination of macroblight was deemed impractical; while the burnings on the mainland stemmed the blight's spread during Fourth Season, Raefel Island itself does not experience relatively cold or dry weather. Some of the fruiting trees on Raefel bear fruit year-round without pause, serving as the perfect vector for maintaining macroblight propagation. Burning the whole island was deemed neither practical or possible, due to the constant storms.
While no longer a pressing threat to Etoilean agriculture, all children across the Principality are now taught the very basics regarding identifying blighted fruit, and sightings of macroblight bring a Principality response team of researchers and agricultural remediators in order to burn any new infestations clean.

Cultural Reception

The widespread burnings during the year 640 were one of the earliest signs of the presence of Etoilean Progress; such a continent-wide mandate would have been impossible during the era of the petty kingdoms, with squabbling kings and nobility likely failing to stem any spread of disease. The successful resolution of the blight resulted in the mass overproduction of fruit in the years 643 to 650, as farmers overestimated the amount of crop and product wastage due to blight. This era of fruit and plenty was for many the first 'legitimizing' act that demonstrated the Principality of Etoile's upholding of Progress.

Type

Fungal

Origin

Natural

Cycle

Chronic, Acquired

Rarity

Rare