Anthracnose

small dark, water-soaked spots on pods, stems, ripening fruit or leaves that quickly turn sunken — pressed inward like a thumbprint or a dimple — with a dry, darkened, often cracked centre. On beans, look for dark sunken 'eye-spots' on the pods and dark streaks running along the veins on the underside of the leaves.

in warm, wet weather the centre of a sunken spot oozes a slimy pink-to-orange paste of spores, and older spots show rings inside rings, like a shooting target, dotted with tiny black specks. That pink-orange slime on a sunken, ringed spot is what sets anthracnose apart from every other spot.

black tear-like streaks run down mango leaves and fruit, and ripe fruit develop soft, sunken, rotting patches that spread from the stem-end. The cruel trick: a fruit can look clean when you pick it, then collapse into a sunken rotten patch in the basket days later — the fungus was hiding inside all along, waiting for the fruit to ripen.

insect or hail damage (holes and tears, but no sunken spreading spot and no pink slime); bacterial spot (angular, water-soaked patches with a yellow halo and cloudy-white — not pink — ooze); or fruit sunscald (a pale, papery, dried patch on the sun-facing side only, with no rings and no slime). If a spot is sunken, ringed, and oozes pink-orange in the wet, treat it as anthracnose.

from the time pods and fruit start to form right through filling and ripening — the crop's most vulnerable months — and step it up every time the weather turns warm and muggy with rain or long dew. The fungus needs about 8 hours of wetness on the plant at 20–30°C to break in, so check within a day of every rain or heavy dew, not on the dry sunny days when it is resting.

cross the field in a big 'W' so you hit all four corners and the middle, making about 10 stops — and go especially into the shady, crowded, low-lying, slow-to-dry patches, because that is where anthracnose starts, not on the breezy dry edge by the path.

turn several leaves over to see the veins underneath, and look closely at the pods, stems, and every ripening fruit — including the stem-end of mangoes and the low fruit near the wet soil. Carry a bag so anything suspect goes straight into it, not back onto the ground.

one sunken, dark, pink-or-orange-centred spot found on a pod, stem or fruit in warm, wet weather is enough to act now. You do not wait for a percentage or for it to spread — anthracnose has no cure once inside, and every rain splashes that one spot onto dozens of clean pods within days.

check your saved seed and last season's leftovers: throw out shrivelled, stained or 'mummified' pods and fruit and any discoloured seed — that trash is exactly where the fungus hides between seasons and how it sneaks into next year's crop.

the moment spots appear, cut out and bag infected pods, fruit, shoots and cankered stems and carry them off the field (never drop them on the ground). Do not work or harvest the crop while it is wet — your hands, tools and legs smear the sticky spores from plant to plant. Pick ripening fruit promptly and gently — bruises let the fungus in — and never pack a spotted fruit in with clean ones.

if wet weather keeps coming and you have found those first lesions, protect the clean growth with a mancozeb fungicide. Know what it does: mancozeb is a protectant (contact) fungicide — it lays a shield on the surface to block new infections but cannot cure a spot already there. So it only pays off if you start at the very first spots and re-spray the new growth and after every rain, at the interval printed on the label.

cover your skin, eyes, nose and mouth; spray in the cool, calm part of the day with the wind at your back; keep spray off food, drinking water, children and bees; and respect the pre-harvest interval — the minimum number of days the label tells you to wait between the last spray and picking, so no poison is left on the food you eat or sell. Wash yourself and your clothes afterwards, and don't lean on one product forever — rotate to a different chemical group whenever you add another fungicide, so the fungus never gets used to it.

when lesions keep multiplying through the pods and fruit despite protection, accept that no spray will cure what is already infected. Harvest everything still clean early, before the next rain; sort ruthlessly — sell or eat the sound fruit and cull the spotted ones (they rot fast and infect the rest in the basket). On badly hit ground, cut and clear the whole crop and all its debris, and never save seed from it. Next season come back clean: resistant variety, treated seed, and a 2–3 season rotation.