First Report of Fusarium Wilt Tropical Race 4 in Cavendish Bananas Caused by Fusarium odoratissimum in Colombia

Twenty-two pseudostem samples, arbitrarily selected from symptomatic Cavendish plants were collected from two farms located 3.8 km apart. These were processed for fungal isolation and characterisation as described by Zheng et al. (2018). White fungal colonies developed from surface sterilised (1 % NaClO) tissue on potato dextrose agar. Three single-spore isolates (Col 2, Col 4 and Col 17) phenotypically resembled F. odoratissimum (Maryani et al. 2019). These isolates were then analysed using three molecular diagnostics targeting two independent regions of the TR4 genome.