Phytoparasitica (1998) 26 (4) - Anthracnose of almond, peach ...
E. Shabi, Talma Katan and S. Freeman (1998)
Anthracnose of almond, peach and pecan, and apple bitter rot caused by Colletotrichum spp.
Phytoparasitica 26 (4)
International Workshop on Host Specificity, Pathology and Host-Pathogen Interaction of Colletotrichum, August 29 - September 1, 1998, Jerusalem, Israel
Abstract: Colletotrichum gloeosporioides (teleomorph Glomerella cingulata) and C. acutatum are major pathogens of many fruit crops all over the world. In the southeastern and mid-western states of the USA, the hot, humid and rainy climate prevailing during the late spring-summer months encourages apple bitter rot and anthracnose of peach and pecan. Both pathogens, C. gloeosporioides and C. acutatum, are associated with fruit infections of apple, peach and pecan, causing crop losses by fruit decay. The disease etiology and symptoms are similar for the two causal agents. Moreover, it is possible to isolate from the same location both C. gloeosporioides and C. acutatum from diseased fruits of apple, peach and pecan. Although summer rains are absent in Israel, apple bitter rot was a destructive disease during 1950-70 in orchards located in the hot and humid coastal plain and irrigated with overhead sprinklers. Following the replacement of overhead irrigation by drip irrigation in apple orchards, bitter rot has not been detected and C. gloeosporioides (Gloeosporium fructigenum) has not been isolated from apple for more than 25 years. Almond anthracnose in Israel is a major pathogen of young almond fruit. The disease was first identified by Brizi in 1896 in Italy, where the almond pathogen was defined as Gloeosporium amygdalinum. Since then, almond anthracnose has been reported from other Mediterranean countries and from Morocco, South Africa and California. In Israel it was first isolated in 1977 and confirmed as C. gloeosporioides by J.A. von Arx, in Baarn, the Netherlands. In California, the disease had been detected by H.L. Czarnecki in 1915 and was reported as "apparently the same as that found on almond in Italy and named G. amygdalinum by Brizi." Almond anthracnose was observed again in California in the mid 1980s, as reported by J.E. Adaskaveg and J.M. Ogawa. Peach anthracnose was reported in California as a postharvest disease in 1990. In both crops C. acutatum was identified as the causal agent. The Californian isolates were chromogenic and insensitive to benomyl. Isolates of the almond pathogen from Israel were not chromogenic but were also insensitive to benomyl - in contrast to the benomyl-sensitive C. gloeosporioides. Their optimal growth temperatures were 20-22°C, as opposed to 26-30°C for isolates of C. gloeosporioides and C. acutatum. The Israeli almond isolates were found to belong to a single vegetative compatibility group (VCG) and to differ from the Californian isolates and C. gloeosporium isolates. Studies applying molecular criteria have provided further evidence that the almond pathogen from Israel constitutes a uniform pathotype and a distinct group of C. gloeosporioides.
(The abstract is excluded from the Creative Commons licence and has been copied with permission by the publisher.)
Database assignments for author(s): Stanley Freeman
Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
general biology - morphology - evolution
identification/taxonomy
