First report of corm rot disease caused by Sclerotium rolfsii in banana.

Bananas (Musa spp.) are the world’s fourth most important global food crop grown in more than 120 countries (Molina and Valmayor 1999) and are the staple food for more than 400 million people (Swennen et al. 1995). India is the world’s largest banana producer and 26 million tonnes are produced annually from 709 000 ha. However, various pests and disease problems, particularly Fusarium wilt, cause significant losses (Ploetz 2005)A corm rot disease was observed for the first time in banana. The disease was found to occur in the majority of commercial cultivars grown in different banana-growing states of India. The incidence of the disease was up to 50% and found to occur at an altitude up to 3000 m asl. The pathogen was identified as Sclerotium rolfsii based on morphological characters and rDNA internal transcribed spacer sequence data