Anthracnose caused by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides is an important disease of custard apple (Annona squamosa) in Brazil and worldwide. Due to the inexistence of standard methods for the assessment of that disease, a diagrammatic scale was developed with 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 40% of diseased leaf area. The diagrammatic scale was validated by 10 raters using 48 custard apple leaves with different levels of anthracnose severity previously measured by the software Assess®. The accuracy, precision and reproducibility estimative of each rater were determined by simple linear regression between actual and estimated severity, with and without the use of the scale. With the scale, the raters obtained better levels of accuracy and precision, with absolute errors concentrating around 10%. Raters showed high repeatability (91%) and reproducibility (³90% in 94.5% of the cases) of the estimates by using the scale. The proposed diagrammatic scale is suitable for the evaluation of anthracnose severity in custard apple.
Annona squamosa; Colletotrichum gloeosporioides; phytopatometry
