J. Pl. Dis. Sci., Vol 14(1) 2019 : 1-9 www.appjpds.com 1 CULTURAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL VARIABILITY OF SCLEROTIUM ROLFSII ISOLATES CAUSING COLLAR ROT OF CHILLI A. T. Daunde 1* , K. T. Apet 2 , A. P. Suryawanshi 3 and K. D. Navgire 4 1* AICRP (Vegetable Crops), VNMKV, Parbhani (MS), India 2&4 Department of Plant Pathology, VNMKV, Parbhani (MS), India 3 Department of Plant Pathology, Dr. BSKKV, Dapoli (MS), India *Email: atdaunde@gmail.com Chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) is mainly cultivated for green fruits as table purpose and dry chilli as spice. Chilli crop suffers from a number of fungal, bacterial, nematode and many viral diseases. Recently, the Collar rot caused by Sclerotium rolfsii Sacc. is becoming sever disease of chilli in India. Crop losses up to 16-80 per cent due to Collar rot disease have been reported by many researchers in this crop (Wangikar et al., 1988;Singh and Dhancholia, 1991; Mathur and Gurjar, 2001). S. rolfsii, is cosmopolitan soilborne necrotrophic plant pathogens, infects more than 500 different plant species in about 100 families including chilli, tomato, brinjal, potato, sweet potato, groundnut, green bean, lima bean, onion, and water melonworldwide and causes collar rot, root rot and stem rot diseases (Aycock, 1966; Punja, 1985; Xu, 2009).The fungus being a well known type member of the genus Sclerotium as it forms differentiated sclerotia, usually causes collar rot diseases. Sclerotia are considered to be extremely hardy and relatively resistant survival structures (Singh et al., 2003), principle means of dispersal (Okabe et al., 2000). Key words: Sclerotium rolfsii, cultural, morphological, variability, chilli Received: 04-12-2018 Accepted: 18-12-2018 ABSTRACT Collar rot of chilli (Capsicum annuum L.)caused by Sclerotium rolfsii Sacc.is currently occurring in chilli growing areas of Marathwada region in India. Cultural and morphological variability of nine isolates of S. rolfsii, collected from three agroclimatic zone consisting nine districts of Marathwada region of Maharashtra, India were studied. Out of nine isolates tested for their cultural and morphological variations, most of them were observed with raised colony with smooth margin. Based on growth rate, they were categorized into three groups such as moderate, good and excellent growing. Number of sclerotia, size of sclerotia and test weight of 100 sclerotia also varied among isolates substantially. Mostly dark to light brown sclerotia was observed for the isolates.Significant variability with reference to mycelial and sclerotial charactersacross isolates of S.rolfsii, isolated from different locations of Marathwada region of Maharashtra was observed.