THE PREVALENCE OF FUNGI ON THE POST HARVESTED GUAVA (PSIDIUM GUAJAVA']JAVA L.) IN AKSUM

Guava is one of the most liked fruit items in Ethiopia and has its own economical importance. In concern with that a project experiment cum survey was carried out on the prevalence of post-harvest diseases of guava was conducted in Aksum in the months of January and March, 2009. During the experiment, 80 samples of diseased guava fruits were collected from different sites of Aksum, Ethiopia. The isolation of post harvest pathogen and analysis of diseased guava fruits was carried out and found that the prevalence of maximum fungi found to be Pestalotia psidii about 32.16% was the major post harvest pathogen isolated from the samples, followed by Rhizopus stolonifer (16%), Aspergillus niger (10.40%), Penicillium expansum (7.20%), Rhizoctonia solani (3.20%) and Fusarium sp. (1.6%). This study is an initiation for the effective post harvest management practice to increase the shelf life of guava and minimize the loss of post harvested guava in the coming future.