• Worldwide distribution. On mango. Many other crops are hosts of this fungus, including avocado, capsicum, coffee, eggplant, papaya, tomato and yam. There are different strains, infecting different crops and weeds. An important disease.
• A wet-weather fungal disease, common on mango and yam. On mango, a blight of flowers, and young shoots, causing leaf spots, and post-harvest rots of ripening fruit.
• Masses of spores are formed, and these are spread in wind-driven rain.
• Cultural control: prune trees (<4 m tall) to allow air to move freely through the canopy, reducing the time that leaves and flowers are wet; resistant varieties.
• Chemical control: use copper or mancozeb, beginning when flowers appear until the pre-harvest waiting period. For fruit: post-harvest dip in carbendazim or hot water (both for 5 minutes at 52°C).

Mango anthracnose, mango blossom blight

Glomerella cingulata (it also has the name of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides). Glomerella is the sexual stage of the fungus, and Colletotrichum the asexual stage. The disease is often referred to as 'anthracnose' of mango. The word anthracnose means 'coal', so fungi that produce dark spots are often given this name. Another fungus also causes leaf spots: Scolecostigmina mangiferae (see Fact Sheet no. 325).