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Occurrence of Anthracnose Fruit-rot on the Endangered Plant Species Harrisia portoricensis

Casiani Soto-Ramos1 and Merari Feliciano-Rivera1,*

1Department of Agro-environmental Sciences, University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez, PR 00680, USA. *Corresponding author.

Caribbean Naturalist, No. 62 (2019)

Abstract
Harrisia portoricencis (Higo Chumbo) is a columnar cactus that belongs to the Cactaceae family. This species is endemic to Puerto Rico and is restricted to 3 islands: Mona, Monito, and Desecheo. Since 2014, individuals from the H. portoricensis collection at the University of Puerto Rico-Mayagüez Campus showed fruit-rot symptoms. Thus, the objective of our research was to characterize the causal agent of the fruit-rot symptoms on H. portoricensis. We based our identification of 4 fungal isolates (HARP 15-01, HARP 15-02, HARP 15-03, and HARP 15-04) on morphology, pathogenicity, and molecular characteristics of the internal transcribed spacer region (ITS) and partial sequences of the β-tubulin (TUB2) genes. The phenotypic appearance of all isolates on potato dextrose agar (PDA), size of the conidia and appressoria matched with the previous description of Colletotrichum siamense. All isolates were pathogenic to H. portoricensis with different levels of severity, ranging from moderate to severe fruit-rot damage of colonized tissue after 10 d of incubation. The partial sequences of the β-tubulin gene of the 4 isolates showed 99% homology with reference sequences C. siamense from the GeneBank. To our knowledge, this is the first report of C. siamense causing fruit rot in the endangered plant species H. portoricensis.

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