First report of twig anthracnose of Albizia falcataria caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides in China.

Abstract

Falcataria moluccana is a fast-growing tree in tropical countries. Anthracnose-like disease symptoms have been observed on twigs of 1-year-old and older F. moluccana in South China since 2012. Disease incidence has reached up to 80%, with almost 100% of twigs of whole trees showing symptoms, which were typical black-brown sunken round or fusiform necrotic spots along the twigs with yellowish leaves. In the advanced stage of disease development, twigs wilted and eventually died. The causal pathogen was isolated and identified as Glomerella cingulata based on morphological, molecular and pathogenicity analyses. The obtained ITS (accession no. KJ690268), TUB2 (KJ676654) and GS (KJ676653) sequences were deposited in Genbank. This is the thought to be first report of twig anthracnose caused by G. cingulata on F. moluccana in China and the world.