First Report of Apple Anthracnose Caused by Colletotrichum fructicola in Uzbekistan

Apple (Malus domestica Borkh.) is an important fruit crop in Uzbekistan. Colletotrichum species are important apple pathogens worldwide, and C. gloeosporioides was recently reported to cause bitter rot of apple in Uzbekistan (Sherimbetov et al. 2026). In September 2025, symptomatic “Golden Delicious” fruits were collected from a 96-ha orchard in Tashkent Province. Disease incidence was 17% among approximately 2,000 fruits examined. Symptoms included circular, grayish-brown lesions with reddish margins that enlarged and coalesced into sunken necrotic areas with V-shaped progression toward the fruit core. Tissues were surface-sterilized with 0.5% NaOCl and cultured on PDA. Seven Colletotrichum isolates were recovered from 80 symptomatic fruits (8.75%). The isolates had similar morphology and symptoms, and five-locus (ITS, CHS, TUB2, ACT, and TEF1-α) sequences were highly similar. UZ-CF1 was therefore selected as a representative strain. Conidia were unicellular, straight, subcylindrical, with rounded ends, measuring 12.9−14.8 × 6.3−7.1 μm (mean 14.8 ± 1.0 × 6.6 ± 0.4 μm; n = 50). UZ-CF1 sequences were deposited in GenBank as PX992403 (ITS), PZ005893 (CHS), PZ005892 (TUB2), PZ005894 (ACT), and PZ005895 (TEF1-α). BLAST showed high similarity to C. fructicola. Maximum-likelihood analysis of concatenated sequences placed UZ-CF1 within the C. fructicola clade with 100% bootstrap support (Kim et al. 2018; Weir et al. 2012). For pathogenicity testing, healthy apple leaves in a moist chamber were inoculated with spores from UZ-CF1. Healthy fruits were wounded with a sterile microbiological cork borer and inoculated with 1 × 10⁵ conidia/ml. Fruits were incubated at 25 ± 2℃ for 10 days. Typical symptoms developed, whereas controls remained healthy. The pathogen was reisolated, fulfilling Koch’s postulates (Kim et al. 2018). This is the first report of C. fructicola causing apple anthracnose in Uzbekistan.