• Worldwide distribution. In the tropics. Many trees are hosts, cocoa, Agathis (kauri), citrus, coffee, Cordia, Hibiscus, mango, and many other trees. Usually, a minor disease, unless maintenance is poor.
• White at first, as pustules develop through cracks and natural openings, then pink as spores form. Cankers develop and leaves die and hang down. Spores spread in wind and rain. They can infect through bark.
• Cultural control: use fertile soils and provide adequate nutrition; space trees >3m to aid air circulation; prune infected branches (in dry weather), and cut below the jorquette (top of the trunk where branches develop) allowing regrowth; avoid heavy shade.
• Chemical control: collect and burn pruned branches; apply copper fungicide as a paste to cut end.

Pink disease of cocoa

Erythricum salmonicolor; also known by older names, Phanerochaete salmonicolor, and Corticium salmonicolor.