New Disease Reports (2008) 18, 25.

First report of bacterial soft rot on potato caused by Dickeya sp. (syn. Erwinia chrysanthemi) in Poland

M. Sławiak 1,2, E. Łojkowska 1 and J.M. van der Wolf 2*

*jan.vanderwolf@wur.nl

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Accepted: 13 Nov 2008

Potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a major crop in Poland with a value of €3000M in 2007. Blackleg has been causing high economic damage, and during 2005, 116 samples of potato stems and tubers with symptoms of blackleg and soft rot, each representing a crop, were collected from 17 regions of Poland. Sample homogenates were plated on crystal violet pectate (CVP) medium. After purification on tripticase soy agar medium, 1000 isolates were identified as Pectobacterium sp. or Dickeya spp. on the basis that they were Gram-negative rods, oxidase negative, facultatively anaerobic, grew at 28°C and degraded pectate. Three isolates from one seed lot, cultivar Sante, were identified as Dickeya spp. (syn. Erwinia chrysanthemi, Pectobacterium chrysanthemi). The seed lot had been grown in the region of Podlaskie in the Northeast of Poland, and multiplied at least once in Poland. The isolates grew at 37°C, were sensitive to erythromycin, positive for phosphatases, negative for acid production from a-methyl-glucoside and caused soft rot in potato tuber slices (Samson et al., 2005). They were also positive in a PCR amplification procedure using pelADE specific primers which are specific for E. chrysanthemi (Nassar et al., 1996).

The test isolates were further identified by biochemical assays as biovar 3 (Palacio-Bielsa et al., 2006). Isolates were identical to Dickeya spp. strains recently isolated from potato in the Netherlands and Finland according to RFLP-patterns of recA sequences (Waleron et al., 2002), rep-PCR patterns, 16S rDNA and dnaX sequence analysis. In a field experiment in the Netherlands in 2008, potato tubers (cv. Kondor) vacuum-infiltrated with a test isolate from Poland resulted in 49% blackleg-diseased plants, whereas the water-inoculated plants were all symptomless, indicating the high aggressiveness of the test isolate.

This is the first report of potato blackleg caused by Dickeya spp. in Poland. The pathogen may have been introduced via seed potato tubers from the Netherlands, where the pre-basic seed of the infected seed lot had been produced. In the last three years, Dickeya spp. have been causing high economic losses to seed potato production in the Netherlands of up to €30M annually. Further spread of the pathogen in potato production in Poland is expected to have a high economic impact.


References

  1. Nassar A, Darrase A, Lemattre M, Kotoujansky A, Dervin C, Vedel R, Bertheau Y, 1996. Characterization of Erwinia chrysanthemi by pectinolytic isozyme polymorphism and restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of PCR-amplified fragments of pel genes. Applied and Environmental Microbiology 62, 2228-35.
  2. Palacio-Bielsa A, Cambra 1 Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria de Aragón, Avd. Montañana, Zaragoza, SpainA. Palacio-Bielsa, Centro de Investigación y Tecnología Agroalimentaria de Aragón, Avd. Montañana, 930–50080, Zaragoza, Spain. Email: apalaciob@aragon.esMA, 2 Centro de Protección Vegetal, Avd. Montañana, Zaragoza, SpainLópez MM 3 Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Agrarias, Carretera Moncada-Náquera, Km 4,5, Moncada, Valencia, Spain 2006.
  3. Characterisation of potato isolates of Dickeya chrysanthemi in Spain by a microtitre system for biovar determination. Annals of Applied Biology 148, 157–164.
  4. Samson R, Legendre JB, Christen R, Fischer-Le Saux M, Achouak W, Gardan L, 2005. Transfer of Pectobacterium chrysanthemi (Burkholder et al., 1953) Brenner et al., 1973 and Brenneria paradisiaca to the genus Dickeya gen. nov. as Dickeya chrysanthemi comb. nov. and Dickeya paradisiaca comb. nov. and delineation of four novel species, Dickeya dadantii sp. nov., Dickeya dianthicola sp. nov., Dickeya diffenbachiae sp. nov., and Dickeya zeae sp. nov. International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology 55, 1415-27.
  5. Waleron M, Waleron K, Podhajska AJ, Lojkowska E, 2002. Genotyping of bacteria belonging to the former Erwinia genus by PCR-RFLP analysis of recA gene fragment. Microbiology 148, 583-595.

This report was formally published in Plant Pathology

©2008 The Authors