**6.5** *Didymella***: blight/rot**

Gummy stem blight (GSB) is caused by *Stagonosporopsis cucurbitacearum (*syn. *Didymella bryoniae*). *S. cucurbitacearum* is an airborne, seed-borne and soil-borne facultative necrotrophic plant pathogen. A black dot like pycnidia is observed on the infected fruits. Its incidence was recorded on cucurbits such as cucumber, bottle gourd, ash gourd, watermelon, etc. in the field and polyhouse. Inoculated PDA plates were produced white mycelium after 4 weeks of incubation at 24°C. Conidia were cylindrical non-septate to monoseptate and

*Postharvest Diseases of Vegetable Crops and Their Management DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.101852*

#### **Figure 4.**

*Didymella black rot, culture plate, and conidia. (A) Bottle gourd, (B) PDA culture plate, (C) conidia.*


#### **Table 2.**

*Postharvest diseases/pathosystems of cucurbitaceous vegetable crops.*


#### **Table 3.**

*Postharvest diseases/pathosystems of solanaceous vegetable crops.*

60 × 40 μm in size. Based on the morphological and microscopic characteristics, the pathogen was identified as *Stagonosporopsis cucurbitacearum* (syn. *Didymella bryoniae*) (**Figure 4** and **Table 2**).

#### **6.6** *Phomopsis***: blight**

Brinjal (*Solanum melongena*, Solanacae) is one of the most important vegetables worldwide. *Phomopsis* vexans is one of the notorious seed-borne fungal pathogens that causes destructive *Phomopsis* blight which ranked second topmost disease of brinjal in India (**Table 3**). Brinjal fruit rot due to the incidence of this disease has been estimated up to 60%. The pathogen was identified on the basis of colony morphology and size of conidia (20–40 × 40 μ) (**Figures 5** and **6**).

#### *Postharvest Technology - Recent Advances, New Perspectives and Applications*

**Figure 5.**

*Typical symptom of* Phomopsis*, culture plate, and conidia. (A–B) brinjal, (Brinjal), (C) brinjal, (D) PDA cultutre plate, (E) conidia.*

#### **Figure 6.**

*Alternaria fruit rot (A–C) and Sclerotinia rot, cultutre and sclerotia. (A) Tomato, (B) tomato, (C) cauliflower, (D) tomato, (E) PDA culture plate, (F) sclerotia.*
