Over the last two winters, producers from the two main carrot production zones have noticed black marks on the roots towards the end of storage. These symptoms were observed in Aquitaine, Lower Normandy and Brittany.
These rather dry lesions begin as small browny-black dots along the root. They are no more than 2mm deep. They grow up to 1-2cm in size in an irregular form.
Identification was carried out at the INRA station in Rennes and the Ctifl Centre in Lansade where they found it to be a grey-green fungus which grows very slowly in Petri dishes and resembles Rhexocercosporidium carotae.