It is a serious fungal disease prevalent in cooler climates and tropical highlands wherever corn is grown.

It is characterized by large cigar shaped necrotic lesions that develop on the leaves due to the polyketide metabolite monocerin.

Instead, two isolates with complementary mating type genes are required for sexual reproduction.

Genotyping of 264 isolates of S. turcica from temperate and tropical regions found that tropical populations had very high genetic diversity, an equal proportion of the two mating types, and low amounts of linkage disequilibrium between different genetic loci, all suggestive of frequent sexual mating and recombination.

In temperate populations, in contrast, there was low genetic diversity, high amounts of linkage disequilibrium, and a single dominant mating type, which suggests infrequent sexual mating.