Sample collection
Thirty samples of apples were collected from different supermar- kets between February and March of 2012 in Riyadh, Saudi Ara- bia. The samples were collected six at a time over five visits to various supermarkets. A total of fifteen apples of the red delicious variety and fifteen of the Granny Smith variety were collected. The collected apples had some obvious lesion or spoilage. Each apple was placed in a sterile plastic bag in room temperature (25–30 C) for six days or until fungal growth was evident all over the sample (after approximately six days). Spoiled or diseased ap- ples were identified by morphological examination using the method of Bukar et al. (2009).