Chilli is an important commercial and vegetable as well as spice crop. Anthracnose, derived from a Greek word meaning ‘coal’, is the common name for plant diseases characterized by dark, sunken lesions, containing spores. The disease causes extensive pre- and post-harvest damage to chilli fruits. The disease symptoms appears on leaves, stem and also on the fruits. In nurseries, most common symptom is damping-off or seedling blight. At various stages of growth die-back and leaf spotting occurs in plant. Since the pathogen causes extensive yield losses at all the stages of growth of plant. There was a need to isolate and characterize the pathogen in order to take proper management practices. The pathogen from the ripened fruits showing typical symptoms was isolated using tissue isolation technique and cultural and morphological characters were studied. The pathogen produced whitish cottony growth on PDA and black coloured bodies representing acervuli. The pathogen produced septate mycelium and acervulus with sharp pointed septate setae containing unbranched conidiophores bearing aseptate, hyaline, falcate shaped conidia tapering at one end with single oil globule at the centre. The setae were commonly smooth, septate and light brown to dark brown in colour, with cylindrical to conical base and sometimes slightly inflated and the tips were acute to roundish.

Chilli anthracnose, Colletotrichum capsici, cultural, morphological characters

The symptoms of chilli anthracnose were typical observed under field conditions. The ripened fruits showing the sunken ulcer like lesions with black fruiting bodies were selected and Colletotrichum sp. was isolated. The cultural and molecular characters have proven that the pathogen is Colletotrichum capsica.

Ranjana Joshi, Yenjerappa S.T., Aswathanarayana D.S., Sreedevi S. Chavan, Kisan B. and Lakshmikant M. (2023). Isolation and characterization of Colletotrichum spp. from infected chilli plant. Biological Forum – An International Journal, 15(11): 469-472.