Phytophthora capsici was first described by Leon H. Leonian at the New Mexico Agricultural Research station in Las Cruces in 1922 (65). In his report, he described a novel species of Phytophthora that caused considerable damage to chili pepper plants in the fall of 1918. A year later, the disease reappeared at the same site and also affected surrounding farms. During the late 1930s and early 1940s, recurrent problems with P. capsici in the Arkansas River Valley of Colorado were described on several vegetable hosts (51– 55,103). The first reported occurrence of P. capsici on a cucurbit crop occurred in 1937, when a 3.2-ha field of cucumbers became diseased resulting in 100% of the fruit rotting (51). By 1940, P. capsici had also been described on eggplant, honeydew melon fruit, summer squash, and tomato fruit (52,103). The disease on tomatoes was reportedly so severe that the viability of the processing tomato industry in the region was threatened. These early reports mirror the situation with P. capsici today on many modern vegetable production farms, especially those in the eastern United States (4,72,84,94). Our research was initiated in 1997, when crop losses caused by P. capsici threatened to bankrupt a number of vegetable producers in Michigan. Growers wanted to know why crop rotation and the use of fungicides in well-drained fields had not provided adequate protection against full-scale epidemics. At that time, there were fundamental gaps in our understanding of P. capsici’s epidemiology in Michigan, and it was difficult to answer these questions with any degree of certainty. We did not recognize the extent to which sexual recombination and genetic diversity could influence management options and success. In particular, the fungicide mefenoxam was being applied by some growers, and the sensitivity of natural populations of P. capsici in Michigan to mefenoxam was unknown at that time. Here we review recent advances in our understanding of P. capsici’s biology, in particular the role of sexual reproduction, and provide an overview of some of the management challenges presented by this information.