First Report of Black Spot Disease Caused by Alternaria alternata on Sweet Persimmon Fruits

Black spot of sweet persimmon, caused by Alternaria alternata, occurred in an orchard in Gyeongnam province, Korea in 2012. The symptom was appearance of 0.5 to 4 cm black spots on the surface of fruit. The pathogen was isolated from flesh of disease lesions. The causal agent was identified as A. alternata by morphological characteristics and sequencers of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) 1 and ITS4 regions of rRNA. Artificial inoculation of the pathogen resulted in development of disease symptoms and the re-isolated pathogen showed characteristics of A. alternata.

Fruit Soft Rot of Sweet Persimmon Caused by Mucor piriformis in Korea

A fruit soft rot caused by Mucor piriformis occurred on sweet persimmon storages in Jinju, Changwon and Gimhae, Gyeongnam province, Korea, 2003. The disease infection usually started from wounding after cracking of fruits. At first, the lesions started with water soaked and rapidly softened and diseased lesion gradually expanded. Colonies on potato dextrose agar at 20degrees C were whitish to olivaceous-buff Sporangia were globose, black and 96~153microm in size. Sporangiophores were 26~42microm in width. Sporangiospores were ellipsoid and 5.8~10.6x4.3~7.6microm in size. Columella was obovoid, cylindrical-ellipsoidal, pyriform, subglobose and 80~125microm in size. Optimal temperature for mycelial growth was 20degrees C on PDA. The causal organism was identified as M. piriformis. This is the first report of fruit soft rot on sweet persimmon caused by M. piriformis in Korea.