Endive plants (Cichorium endivia) from Catalão city, in the state of Goiás, Brazil that presented leaf spots, were examined in 2001 at the Embrapa Hortaliças (Embrapa Research Center for Vegetable Crops), Plant Disease Clinic. A single spore culture of a fungus of the genus Alternaria was obtained in PDA. The isolate was cultivated on tomato juice agar and conidia was used for inoculating endive plants (10(5) conidia/ml) under greenhouse conditions. After incubation (ten days) symptoms similar to the ones originally observed were detected on the inoculated plants. The fungus was reisolated from those plants and Koch's postulates were carried out. The Pathogenicity of the fungus was also tested on other plants from the Asteraceae family such as lettuce (Lactuca sativa) (three cultivars), chicory (two cultivars), Catalonha (Cichorium intybus), annual sowthistle (Sonchus oleraceus) (weed species) and endive (control). The fungus infected all inoculated plants, but disease symptoms varied on each one. Symptoms started sooner and developed much more rapidly on endive plants. The pathogen was characterized morphologically and morphometrically and identified as Alternaria cichorii. Another Alternaria species (A. sonchi) was reported on endive in the States of São Paulo and Minas Gerais. This paper reports for the first time an occurrence of A. cichorii as a pathogen of endive in Brazil and discusses the possibility of infection in other Asteraceae plants.
