How to Identify, Prevent and Control Anthracnose disease in Pepper Farms

Have you ever noticed dark, sunken spots in your pepper fruits?  Take a good look at the picture. It is called anthracnose disease of pepper.

 

The anthracnose disease reduces your peppers' fruit quality, making them not suitable for the market. This leads to heavy losses in pepper farms. 

 

Pepper anthracnose disease can affect all types of pepper. This includes habanero pepper, chilli pepper, bell or sweet pepper.

 

One of my trainee farmers called me to say that he has a disease incidence that has damaged almost all the fruits on his pepper farm. I visited the farm and identified the disease to be pepper anthracnose.

 

Consequently, I decided to write this article in order to educate farmers on how to identify, prevent and control anthracnose disease in their pepper farms. 

 

How to identify Anthracnose disease in a pepper farm? 

 

Anthracnose disease affects a wide range of vegetable crops. It is caused by fungi of the genus Colletotrichum. It spreads faster during warm, wet conditions.

 

While the symptoms are similar, the fungi that cause the disease are different from host to host.

 

The specific one that causes anthracnose in peppers is called Colletotrichum collodes.

 

The name of the disease anthracnose actually means "coal disease". This can give you clues on what to look for. Pepper anthracnose is identified by dark spots on pepper fruits, leaves,and stems,  frequently sunken, that later become black.

 

How to prevent anthracnose disease from infecting your farm.

 

Prevention is always the best form of defence or control against all vegetable farm diseases. Prevention is also cheaper and easier than treatment. 

 

We should not allow diseases like anthracnose to invade our farms before we start taking preventive measures against them.

 

Like every other vegetable disease, the first preventive measure against anthracnose disease is to grow resistant pepper varieties. This will help reduce the cost of chemical controls.

 

Anthracnose disease can also be prevented by using recommended spacing that allows for good ventilation and fast drying out of plants after rain or humid conditions. 

Do not enter the pepper farm during the early morning or rainy days when there is so much moisture on the pepper farm. Only enter when the leaves are dried out. This will prevent disease spread in your pepper farm.

 

Routine application of fungicides containing metalaxyl, mancozeb and carbendazim also controls them. Make sure to apply your fungicides every week and don't miss it. Also, switch to other fungicides with different active ingredients and modes of action to prevent fungicide resistance by the disease.

Control and Treatment of Anthracnose in Pepper Farm

Let's assume you let your guard down and your pepper farm got infected by anthracnose disease, how do you get to treat the farm or control the disease.

• Remove and burn infected fruits and badly infected pepper plants to control the spread of the disease.
• If the pepper farm is overcrowded and poorly ventilated like the one in the video below, you need to prune or remove some plants to allow for proper ventilation.
• Apply a mix of Mancozeb + carbendazim for two consecutive days, followed by copper +metalaxyl for another 2 consecutive days. 
• Repeat again after Seven day with Mancozeb or another two days 
• Continue spraying the fungicides every week interchanging with different active ingredients until the anthracnose disease is cleared from the farm.

You can also watch this video I made on an anthracnose-infected pepper farm. 

Please drop your comments down below.  Also, share this article with your farmer friends. It will be of a lot of benefit to them.