ABSTRACT During 2023–2024, severe leaf blight symptoms were observed on Lilium orientalis ‘Stargazer’ in commercial polyhouses in Solan district, Himachal Pradesh, India, with disease incidence reaching 92.75% and disease severity (percent disease index) of 76.00% at the Nauni research station. Symptomatic leaves exhibited dark brown necrotic lesions with characteristic concentric rings, accompanied by rapid tissue collapse and bud necrosis. Through morphological characterization, pathogenicity assays fulfilling Koch's postulates, and multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) of four gene regions (ITS, Alt a1 , RPB2 , and Gpd ), the causal agent was identified as Alternaria alternata (Section Alternaria ). This represents the first molecularly confirmed report of A. alternata causing leaf blight on Lilium orientalis in India.
Bamel et al. (Fri,) studied this question.