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Green Pepper Fruit Cracking, Rot and Deformities: Causes & How to Fix It

The fruit of your green pepper is rotting at the tip, splitting, misshapen, or hollow inside. Fruit problems are more often about water, calcium, and pollination than disease, so the fix is usually in how you grow rather than what you spray.

Check these first

  • Does the rot start at the blossom end or from a wound?
  • Was there heavy rain or uneven watering just before the fruit split?
  • What were the temperatures and pollination conditions when it flowered?

Most likely causes

From the pests and diseases recorded for this plant, the ones whose symptoms match, most serious first. Symptoms alone rarely confirm a cause, so use the linked page to check the signs and treatment.

Bacterial Spot

Small water-soaked spots appear on the leaves, later turning brown with yellowing around them. Fruit develops water-soaked or scabby spots from which rot spreads.

How to identify and treat: Bacterial Spot

Tomato Spotted Wilt

Brown necrotic spots and ring patterns appear on the leaves and the growing tips shrivel and darken. Fruit develops concentric yellow rings that make it unmarketable.

How to identify and treat: Tomato Spotted Wilt

Pepper Mild Mottle Virus

Leaves become faintly variegated and mottled and crinkle slightly. Fruit stays small, is bumpy and unevenly colored, and fewer fruits set.

How to identify and treat: Pepper Mild Mottle Virus

Other possible causes

Show the other 19
  • Thrips — Silvery white to brown scarring spreads over leaf and fruit surfaces. Flowers discolor and…
  • Helicoverpa Bollworms — Round holes are bored into fruit and buds, the inside eaten out and packed with frass. Rot…
  • Sunscald — The sun-facing side of the fruit bleaches white to pale yellow, then dries into a sunken l…
  • Cucumber Mosaic Virus — New leaves show a yellow-green mosaic, crinkle, and the whole plant becomes stunted. Fruit…
  • Late Blight — Dark green water-soaked lesions appear on the leaves and expand quickly into brown dead ti…
  • Blossom End Rot — The blossom end of the fruit turns water-soaked, then dark brown, and sinks in. It is most…
  • Tomato Mosaic Virus — Light and dark mosaic appears on the leaves, which narrow, twist and crinkle. Fruit ripens…
  • Twenty-eight-spotted Ladybird — The leaf surface is shaved thin, leaving a fine net-like pattern of feeding scars. Heavy f…
  • Asian Corn Borer — Entry holes and powdery frass appear on the tassel and stalk, and the stalk may snap. Larv…
  • Stone Fruit Disorder of Eggplant — Fruit is hard, loses its gloss and stops at a small size without sizing up. Cut it open an…
  • Puffy Fruit — The fruit looks normal outside but is hollow inside when cut, feeling light and angular in…
  • Bacterial Soft Rot — The crown or the head becomes water-soaked and soft, then collapses into a slimy mush. The…
  • Bacterial Canker — Leaf margins scorch and die back, and splitting the stem reveals browned vascular tissue. …
  • Gray Mold — Water-soaked brown lesions form on flowers, fruit and leaves, densely covered by a fuzzy g…
  • Anthracnose — Light brown to dark brown round lesions with sharp margins form on leaves and fruit, sligh…
  • Sclerotinia Rot — The crown, stem or head rots in a water-soaked way and is covered in white cottony myceliu…
  • Southern Blight — The stem rots at soil level and white silky mycelium spreads over the crown and the surrou…
  • Ring Rot — The bark of branches and trunk becomes rough and warty, serving as the inoculum source. Fr…
  • Root Rot — Fine roots rot brown to blackish brown, growth stops and the lower leaves yellow. The plan…

Other symptoms on this plant

What other growers did about it

A page like this one can tell you what green pepper fruit cracking, rot and deformities is and what to try. What it cannot tell you is what actually happened to someone who had it on the same plant, at the same point in the season, and what they did next.

Gadenin is a free garden journal built around that. You photograph the plant, tag what you are seeing, and the entries line up by date for each plant you grow.

  • Tag the problem and the app tells you how many other growers have logged the same thing on the same plant.
  • Growers who make their records public can be followed, so you can read what they did and how it turned out.
  • Next season your own entries come back at the same point in the year, so you check the plant before it starts.

Free on iPhone. Recording, tagging and reading public records cost nothing.

Read next

Record watering dates and rainfall alongside photos of the fruit. Cracking and blossom-end rot almost always trace back to a swing in water supply.

See what other growers did about it

Log it in the free Gadenin app and tag what you are seeing. Your photos line up by date so you can tell whether it is spreading, and you can see how many other growers have logged the same problem on the same plant, follow them and read what they did next.

Free on iPhone. Android coming later.

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