• Ripe fruits turning red are affected
• Small, black, circular spot appears on the fruit skin
• Badly diseased fruits turn straw colour or pale white colour, lose their pungency
• Diseased cut open fruits - lower surface of the skin is covered with minute, elevated sclerotia
• Advanced stage - seeds covered by a mat of fungal hyphae, turn rusty in colour

• Mycelium - septate and inter and intra cellular
• Acervuli and stroma on the stem are hemispherical
• Conidia - in mass appear pinkish

• Temp - 28°C, RH - 95%
• High humid conditions when rain occurs after the fruits have started to ripe

Mode of spread

• Seed borne
• Secondary spread is by air borne conidia & rain
• Flies and other insects – responsible for dissemination of the spores from one fruit to another

Management :

• Use disease free seeds
• seed treatment - thiram 2 kg/ha or zineb 2.5 kg/ha
• Three sprayings with captan 0.2 %- 1st spraying - just before flowering, 2nd at the time of fruit formation and 3rd - fortnight interval after second spraying

Biocontrol

• P. fluorescens, Bacillus subtilis -effective (Rajavel, 2000)
• P. fluorescens and T. viride (Muthuraj, 1998)
• Saccharomyces cerevisiae & P. fluorescens (Jayalakshmi et al., 1998)
• Essential oil - Nigella sativa - antimicrobial activity