Plum (Prunus salicina Lindl.) is commercially cultivated worldwide for the high levels of nutrients in the fruit. In recent years, anthracnose has been severe in some plum planting areas in China, resulting in a large number of necrotic leaves, blight and pre-mature leaf fall. In this study, anthracnose samples of plum leaves were collected from Hezhou, Guilin and Lipu, Guangxi Province, and Meishan city, Abe Tibetan and Qiang autonomous prefecture of Sichuan Province. Characteristics of mycelia on PDA, morphology of appressoria and conidia, and analysis of sequences of several marker regions (internal transcribed spacer [ITS] region, glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase [GAPDH], chitin synthase [CHS-1], histone H3 [HIS3], actin [ACT], β-tubulin [TUB2], and the intergenic region between apn2 and MAT1-2-1 [ApMat]). The resulting 101 Colletotrichum isolates obtained were identified as eight species: C. fructicola (50.5%), C. siamense (24.8%), C. karsti (8.9%), C. plurivorum (7.9%), C. aeschynomenes (3.9%), C. gloeosporioides (2%), C. celtidis (1%) and C. phyllanthi (1%). Representatives of all eight Colletotrichum species were found to cause disease on wounded leaves of plum seedlings in pathogenicity assays. As far as we are aware, this is the first report of anthracnose of plum caused by C. celtidis and C. phyllanthi in China.
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