Colletotrichum

The genus Colletotrichum are fungi that infect a broad range of plants and trees. These include berries, fruits, conifers, and cereal crops. They have been considered the 8^th most important global pathogenic fungi due to their damage to crop yields.

Colletotrichum
Colletotrichum pandanicola (10.3897-mycokeys.33.23670) Figure 15
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Fungi
Class:	Sordariomycetes
Order:	Glomerellales
Family:	Glomerellaceae
Genus:	Colletotrichum

Habitat

These fungi live mostly in the tropics and subtropical regions, but some can live in temperate climates. Colletotrichum fungi live on and inside plants. They can also survive in the soil by feeding on dead pieces of plants. Although Colletotrichum growing on plants will often cause disease, sometimes the fungus is symbiotic with the plant and will instead protect it from infection by other pathogens.

Life cycle

These fungi can be either sexual or asexual. Asexual fungi grow on plants and cause disease. Sexual fungi live in the soil and grows on dead pieces of plants.

The Colletotrichum were previously considered to be asexually reproducing fungi with all sexually reproducing forms classed in the Glomerella genus. However, these two groups have since been combined under the name Colletotrichum .

Classification

Originally, Colletotrichum species were thought to only be able to infect one host plant each, so each plant had its own species of Colletotrichum. However, it is now known that these fungi can each infect many different hosts.

There are now 248 known species in the genus. This number however is likely to increase with more study.

Disease

Colletotrichum fungi can infect many different plants. Humans are affected when they infect crop plants because they can destroy large portions of crop harvests. Fruits like strawberries, bananas, mangos, avocado, coffee berries, and citrus fruits are especially affected. As are maize, sugar cane, and sorghum which are core staples of many people’s diets.  

The most common disease caused by Colletotrichum species is anthracnose. Anthracnose results in rotting wounds on the stem, leaves, flowers, and fruit of infected plants and the death of seeds and seedlings. Colletotrichum species can also cause red rot on sugar cane, crown rot on bananas and strawberries, and brown blotch on cowpeas. Maize anthracnose is an economically important disease worldwide.

Plants are not the only hosts for Colletotrichum species. Some fungus biotypes have the ability to infect insect hosts, most notably the true bugs such scale bugs. Others, such as C. dematium and C. gloeosporioides, can cause skin infections in humans while one species was reported to have caused an infection in a sea turtle. Although these are uncommon infections.

History

The genus Colletotrichum was first created in 1831. Since then, the genus has been used to study genetics and the effects of parasites and hosts on each other.