[Crown Copyright Reserved. 
ROYAL BOTANIC GARDENS, KEW. 
BULLETIN 
MISCELLANEOUS INFORMATION. 
No. PIE donne ‘all ai 0 £1922 
XXXIX.—OOSPORES IN CULTURES OF 
PHYTOPHTHORA FABERI. 
S. F. Asupy. 
Phytophthora faberi, Maubl. the cause of podrot, patch canker 
and chupon wilt of cacao has been reported from most parts of 
the tropical Old and New Worlds where the tree is cultivated. 
It has been isolated and studied in pure culture by a number of 
authors, more particularly by Coleman, Rosenbaum, Rorer and 
McRae. Coleman and Rorer mention the finding of bodies in 
nature which they believed were oospores and Coleman saw 
similar bodies in cultures; these bodies however were devoid 
of antheridia and were in all probability nothing but chlamydo- 
spores which are developed freely by the fungus on and in the 
pod wall and in pure cultures. Neither Rosenbaum nor any 
of the other investigators who have worked with the fungus has 
reported the finding of oospores. The writer has repeatedly 
isolated this species from cacao in Jamaica and more recently 
from cacao in Grenada but has never seen a trace of oospores 
in pure cultures on a variety of media including bean, oat and 
while the other, which is the cause of a serious budrot, closely 
resembles the cacao fungus. ! 
develop oospores in pure culture and the same observation applies 
to a Phytophthora isolated in the present year from rotting cotton 
bolls in St. Vincent which in its vigour of growth, mycelial 
characters and asexual reproduction appears to be identical 
with the form from the budrot of the coconut. (This Phyto- 
phthora from cotton bolls in St. Vincent is quite distinct from 
the species isolated by Miss E. M. Wakefield from cotton bolls 
in Montserrat which both she and the writer consider to be a 
strain of P. parasitica). In pure culture the cacao fungus differs 
% (78)18884 Wt122—P 23 1000 11/22 A 
