Daniel Stanley Tan edited The_Philippine_Bureau_of_Agricultural__.tex  over 8 years ago

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As shown in Figure \ref{fig:infectedPods}, one will observe a clear boundary between the healthy and infected part of the pod. The infected part of the pod is discolored and it spreads quickly to the whole pod surface, turning the pod into blackish brown. Sudjud et al. \cite{sudjud2013intensity} observed that the discoloration usually started from the tip of the pod or near the stem. The disease can occur in any age group of the pod. However, if the infected pod is still young, it cannot be harvested unlike pods that have already ripened.   As of today, farmers and agricultural technicians visually inspect the cacao pods and compare them with a visual aid to assess the severity of the disease. The severity index of pod rot in cacao is ranked based on a scale from 0 to 5 (see Figure \ref{fig:visualAid} below). This scale is patterned from Alvindia and Acda’s work on managing anthracnose of mango mangoes  \cite{alvindia2015revisiting}. They assign an index of 0 if there is no visible spot in the mango;1 if there is one depressed spot that is dark in color and 1 to 5 mm in diameter on the epidermis of the fruit; 2 if the fruit has 2 to 3 depressed spots and is dark in color with 1 to 5 mm in diameter; 3 if 2-3 depressed spots, dark in color with more than 5 mm in diameter; 4 if more than 3 depressed spots, dark in color with more than 5 mm in diameter; and 5 if the depressed spots merged.