First report of Cladosporium sphaerospermum causing leaf spot disease of Aloe vera in India

This paper deals with the study of a leaf spot disease observed on Aloe vera leaves in various nurseries and botanical gardens during the routine surveys of two consecutive years of 2010 and 2011. The symptoms appeared in the form of circular to oval, brown to black, sunken spots on abaxial surface of leaves. The disease was observed only in January to February during the survey. Colonies on PDA were velvety, dark olivaceous to greenish black in colour. The identification of the pathogen was done phenotypically using disease symptoms and microscopic characteristics. Further investigation identified it as Cladosporium sphaerospermum Penzig which was also confirmed at Indian Type Culture Collection (ITCC), IARI, New Delhi, India. According to the literature, this is the first report of Cladosporium sphaerospermum as causal agent of leaf spot disease on A. vera from India.