| cacao diseases: important threats to chocolate production worldwide. | abstract theobroma cacao, cacao, is an ancient, neotropical domesticate. it is now grown throughout the humid, lowland tropics and is the basis of a multibillion dollar confectionary trade. diverse diseases impact production of the crop. they reduce yields by ca. 20%, but could cause far greater losses if certain highly damaging diseases were to become more widely distributed. among the most potentially dangerous of these diseases are frosty pod, caused by moniliophthora roreri, and witches' bro ... | 2007 | 18943724 |
| vascular-streak dieback: a new encounter disease of cacao in papua new guinea and southeast asia caused by the obligate basidiomycete oncobasidium theobromae. | abstract the basidiomycete oncobasidium theobromae was identified as the cause of a devastating disease of cacao named vascular-streak dieback (vsd) in papua new guinea in the 1960s. vsd now causes losses among cacao seedlings and kills branches in mature cacao trees throughout southeast asia and parts of melanesia. the characteristic symptoms include a green-spotted chlorosis and fall of leaves beginning on the second or third flush behind the stem apex, raised lenticels, and darkening of vascu ... | 2007 | 18943729 |
| Vascular Streak Dieback of cacao in Southeast Asia and Melanesia: in planta detection of the pathogen and a new taxonomy. | Vascular Streak Dieback (VSD) disease of cacao (Theobroma cacao) in Southeast Asia and Melanesia is caused by a basidiomycete (Ceratobasidiales) fungus Oncobasidium theobromae (syn. =Thanatephorus theobromae). The most characteristic symptoms of the disease are green-spotted leaf chlorosis or, commonly since about 2004, necrotic blotches, followed by senescence of leaves beginning on the second or third flush behind the shoot apex, and blackening of infected xylem in the vascular traces at the l ... | 2012 | 22208598 |