Abstract

An unknown speckle disease was recently observed on Cavendish banana leaves in Levubu, the most northern of the five banana-growing regions of South Africa. Morphological examination of infected material and single conidial isolates of the causal organism revealed that it was Cladosporium musae. Isolates of the fungus were subjected to pathogenicity testing and sequencing of the ITS region (ITS-1 and ITS-2) and the 5.8S gene of the rDNA operon, and compared with an authentic strain of C. musae. These results verified the identity of the fungus as C. musae and constitute the first confirmed report of Cladosporium speckle on banana leaves in South Africa.