Citation: Ciofini, A.; Negrini, F.; Baroncelli, R.; Baraldi, E. Management of Post-Harvest Anthracnose: Current Approaches and Future Perspectives. Plants 2022, 11, 1856. https://doi.org/10.3390/ plants11141856 Academic Editor: Gabriella Cirvilleri Received: 19 June 2022 Accepted: 11 July 2022 Published: 15 July 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). plants Review Management of Post-Harvest Anthracnose: Current Approaches and Future Perspectives Alice Ciofini *, Francesca Negrini , Riccardo Baroncelli and Elena Baraldi * Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences (DISTAL), University of Bologna, Viale Fanin 44, 40126 Bologna, Italy; francesca.negrini6@unibo.it (F.N.); riccardo.baroncelli@unibo.it (R.B.) * Correspondence: alice.ciofini@unibo.it (A.C.); elena.baraldi@unibo.it (E.B.) Abstract: Anthracnose is a severe disease caused by Colletotrichum spp. on several crop species. Fungal infections can occur both in the field and at the post-harvest stage causing severe lesions on fruits and economic losses. Physical treatments and synthetic fungicides have traditionally been the preferred means to control anthracnose adverse effects; however, the urgent need to decrease the use of toxic chemicals led to the investigation of innovative and sustainable protection techniques. Evidence for the efficacy of biological agents and vegetal derivates has been reported; however, their introduction into actual crop protection strategies requires the solutions of several critical issues. Biotechnology-based approaches have also been explored, revealing the opportunity to develop innovative and safe methods for anthracnose management through genome editing and RNA interference technologies. Nevertheless, besides the number of advantages related to their use, e.g., the putative absence of adverse effects due to their high specificity, a number of aspects remain to be clarified to enable their introduction into Integrated Pest Management (IPM) protocols against Colletotrichum spp. disease. Keywords: crop protection; anthracnose; Colletotrichum; post-harvest 1. Epidemiology and Pathology of Colletotrichum spp. 1.1. Interaction between Colletotrichum spp. and Their Hosts The genus Colletotrichum comprises more than 200 fungal species, informally gathered in 15 species complexes [1]. Many of them are pathogens of important crops where they cause anthracnose, a severe disease with great economic impact. For this reason, Colletotrichum spp. have been listed among the top ten most relevant fungal pathogens worldwide [2,3]. Plant infections occur mainly in tropical and sub-tropical regions and less frequently at temperate latitudes since their onset requires warm temperature and high relative humidity [4,5]. Duration and intensity of rainfalls, wetness of the leaf surface and light in- tensity have also been reported as factors positively correlated with the infective process [6]. For these reasons, crops located in regions with frequent precipitations, never really drying between rainfalls, are particularly affected by Colletotrichum infections. With respect to fruit infection, the early stages of the interaction with host tissues are similar for all the Colletotrichum species [7]: conidiospores spread from infected vegetal material or through insects, adhere by means of a hemicellulosic mucilage to the external vegetal surface, germinate and infect often by mean of specialized structures, such as appressoria [8–11]. Infections can take place even by penetration through stomata, lenticels, wounds, or abscission of scar tissue [11–15]. Although specific host–pathogen interaction and infection strategies have been detected, such as in C. acutatum sensu lato that exhibit four different colonization pathways [16], the process proceeds according to two main strategies, depending on the different species, hosts, and tissues: (i) intracellular hemibiotrophy or (ii) subcuticular, intramural necrotrophy [6,7,17,18]. The first one includes an initial short Plants 2022, 11, 1856. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11141856 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/plants