Crater Spot Celery Symptoms and Treatment

Let’s find out about crater spot celery symptoms and treatment guidelines!

Crater Spot Celery Definition

Crater spot celery meaning: What is crater spot celery?

This disease affects the stems of celery and parsley, making them look ugly and requiring more trimming at harvest time. The disease happens rarely, but when it does, it can cause a lot of damage. This disease is not the same as crater rot, which is caused by Rhizoctonia carotae and affects carrots.

Crater Spot Celery Causes

What causes crater spot celery? What is the most common cause of crater spot celery?

Thanatephorus cucumeris, a basidiomycete fungus, is what causes crater spots. R. solani is more often seen in its anamorph stage. This pathogen lives in the soil as a saprophyte and can infect many plants. For example, see the part of this chapter about carrot crown rot that talks about R. solani. Some R. solani isolates from celery seem to be able to infect crops like beans, cotton, and tomato. Isolates from sugar beet and potato can also cause crater spots. On the lower parts of celery petioles, you can sometimes see the white or grey mycelium mat of the teleomorph T. cucumeris.

Crater Spot Celery Symptoms

Signs and symptoms of crater spot celery: What are some symptoms of crater spot celery?

The symptoms only appear on the lower parts of the petioles near the soil. They range from small (3–8 mm in diameter), pale brown, water-soaked spots to large (5 cm in diameter), reddish-brown, sunken lesions. Lesions can happen on both the outside and the inside of the petiole. The lesions outside the petiole are rectangular because large veins surround them. The disease causes dry, hard rot, but sometimes other organisms take over the lesions and cause soft rot. Most of the time, symptoms are found close to harvest.

Crater Spot Celery Disease Cycle

Rhizoctonia solani can live in soil and organic matter. When the soil is warm and wet, diseases are easier to spread. But in the UK, problems can happen with late-season crops when the weather is cool, and the soil gets close to the celery stems because of cultivation. There is a chance that the T. cucumeris stage does not cause disease.

Crater Spot Celery Treatment Guidelines

Treatment of crater spot celery – What is the best treatment for crater spot celery?

Don’t plant celery in fields where there are fresh crop residues or crop residues that are only partially broken down. These are food sources for R. solani. Planting transplants too deeply makes them more likely to get crater spots, which can be very bad. Fields should drain well and not stay too wet. Don’t move soil into and around the plant crowns when cultivating and pulling weeds. Fungicides should be used where problems happen often. Rotate celery with crops that R. solani doesn’t like, such as cereals, to reduce the number of R. solani in the soil. But short crop rotations won’t eliminate R. solani populations that live in the soil.

I hope you understand crater spot celery symptoms and treatment guidelines.