Fungal disease
Anthracnose
Colletotrichum spp.
Warm-weather fruit rot, and the reason several of the cultivars grown here were bred in the first place.
What you see
- 01Circular, sunken, water-soaked lesions on fruit
- 02Lesions tan to black, on green and ripe fruit alike
- 03In crown-infecting forms, plants wilt and collapse
What brings it on
Warm temperatures with rain or overhead irrigation. Splash carries spores, so it moves fastest through a wet, dense canopy.
Why it costs money
It takes green fruit as well as ripe, so losses accumulate through the whole picking window rather than at the end of it. Crown-rot forms kill plants outright.
What to do
- Start from clean planting material — this pathogen arrives with infected runners more often than growers expect
- Avoid overhead irrigation where you can; splash is the main means of spread
- Remove infected fruit from the field
- Choose a resistant cultivar where anthracnose has been a problem before
Spray strategy. Weight the programme towards the warmer part of the season, when anthracnose is active, and keep multi-site products as the backbone with rotated modes of action.
Cultivars with resistance
- Sweet Charlie
Bred from an anthracnose-resistant parent; at release it was the only cultivar adapted to central Florida resistant to anthracnose fruit rot
- Winter Dawn
Moderately resistant to anthracnose fruit rot, plus resistance to Colletotrichum crown rot
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