Anthracnose of Peppers

All growth stages may be affected, including postharvest stages. Symptoms occur primarily on ripening fruit often where fruit is touching the soil or plant debris. On ripe fruit there are small, sunken circular depressions up to 30 mm in diameter. The center of the lesions becomes tan in color while the tissue beneath the lesion is lighter-colored and dotted with many dark-colored fruiting bodies of the fungus that form concentric rings in the lesion. The salmon-colored areas on the surface in the central portions of the lesions consist of large masses of fungus spores.
Green fruit may also be infected but symptoms will not appear until the fruit ripens at harvest time. Such an infection is called latent. Young fruit infected by C. acutatum can have visible symptom development.
Foliage and stem symptoms appear as small, irregularly shaped gray-brown spots with dark brown edges.
Among the Colletotrichum spp. that affect pepper, C. gloeosporioides has the widest host range among solanaceous crops and various biotypes have been reported on hosts. C. acutatum has caused severe fruit and foliar damage to pepper in several tropical and regions. C. coccodes is the least aggressive species and is more commonly found in temperate regions. In general, disease symptoms caused by the various species of Colletotrichum are similar and microscopic analysis is necessary to identify species.