First Report of Anthracnose Caused by Colletotrichum asianum on Mango (Mangifera indica) in Peru.

Mangoes (Mangifera indica L.) are one of the most important export fruits in Peru and anthracnose, caused by several species in the Colletotrichum gloeosporioides species complex (CGSC), is one of their main postharvest diseases (Alvarez et al. 2020). Balsas is the major mango producing district in the Amazonas department, where farmers practice intercropping in orchards mostly of less than 5 ha (Cabezudo Cerpa 2022). In July 2021, mango fruits cv. Kent with anthracnose were detected at an incidence of 55 to 80% during postharvest in Balsas. Symptoms included sunken dark brown lesions with appearance of orange conidiomata at advanced stages of the disease. We collected two samples of infected mangoes from a farm located at 6°51'01" S, 77°59'48" W (1088 m.a.s.l.). One axenic culture (INDES-AM1) was obtained from a hyphal tip of a monosporic colony and cultivated on PDA medium at 25 °C in the dark. The growing rate of the colony was 8.1 mm.day-1. Conidia were hyaline, guttulate, unicellular and cylindrical with narrowing center, with dimensions of 15.8 to 23.5 × 4.5 to 7.6 μm (mean = 18.6 ± 0.03 × 6.0 ± 0.02 μm, SE, n = 50), consistent to the CGSC (Weir et al. 2012). Appressoria were dark brown, and ovoid to slightly irregular in shape, ranging from 5.3 to 10.1 × 4.7 to 8.3 μm (mean = 7.9 ± 0.02 × 6.0 ± 0.02 μm, SE, n = 50). Koch's postulates were fulfilled on mature mango fruits of the same cultivar and from the same district. Mangoes were washed with detergent and left to dry before inoculation. PDA-mycelial plugs of 0.5 cm wide were transferred on two different locations of two fruits, with four replicates. One location was previously wounded with five needle punctures of 3 mm depth. The inoculated fruits were maintained in a moist chamber at ambient light and temperature (18.9 ± 0.5 °C, SE). Symptoms appeared three-to-five days post inoculation (dpi), and the superficial diameter of the lesions were 8.3 ± 1.5 and 3.6 ± 2 mm with the invasive and the superficial inoculation approaches, respectively, at five dpi. Lesions were very similar to original symptoms. Macro and micromorphological characteristics of the re-isolated fungal colonies were the same as isolate INDES-AM1. Molecular identification of the pathogen was carried out following Weir et al. (2012). Total DNA was extracted using the Wizard® Genomic DNA Purification Kit (Promega Corp., Madison, Wisconsin) and the ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS), and partial sequences of the chitin synthase (CHS1), actin (ACT), β-tubulin 2 (TUB2), calmodulin (CAL), and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) nuclear genes were sequenced (Accession numbers: OP425395, OP440444, OP440442, OP440443, OP555062, OP555063). ITS, CHS1, ACT, TUB2, CAL, and GAPDH sequences were 98.6, 100, 100, 99.5, 100, and 99.08% identical to Colletotrichum asianum type strain ICMP 18580 sequences, respectively. Additionally, a bootstrapped maximum likelihood midpoint-rooted phylogeny with a multilocus dataset with the six sequences from reference strains of C. asianum and closely related species within the CGSC revealed that strain INDES-AM1 is C. asianum. This species has been found causing anthracnose on M. indica in at least 15 different countries in Africa, America, Asia, and Oceania (Weir et al. 2012). It was originally described from coffee and has multiple other hosts (Prihastuti et al. 2009; Lima et al. 2015). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of C. asianum infecting mangoes in Peru.