In 2002, soft rot symptoms on white flowered calla lily (Zantedeschia aethiopica) were found in some nurseries in the Yang Ming Shan area, Taipei, Taiwan. The disease was characterized by foul smelling rot and collapse of flower stems. Isolations from diseased flower stems consistently yielded bacterial colonies that were translucent, white, and glistening on nutrient agar. Ten representative isolates were chosen for further characterization. All isolates were gram-negative rods, facultatively anaerobic, sensitive to erythromycin (25 μg/ml), negative for oxidase and arginine dihydrolase, and positive for catalase, phosphatase, tryptophanase (indole production), and lecithinase. They fermented glucose and reduced nitrates to nitrites. The maximum temperature for growth was 37°C. The isolates hydrolyzed gelatin and esculin, produced acids from utilizing D(+)-glucose, melibiose, amygdalin, L(+)-arabinose, D-mannitol, and sucrose, but not from trehalose, lactose, D-sorbitol, or maltose. They degraded pectate and rotted potato, carrot, sweet pepper, and onion slices. Bacterial suspensions (108 CFU/ml) were injected in stems of white flowered calla lily to fulfill Koch's postulates. Control plants were inoculated with sterile distilled water. Inoculated plants were kept in a growth chamber at 30°C. Symptoms developed 1 to 2 days in all four inoculated plants and appeared to be identical to those observed on diseased material in nurseries. The four control plants did not rot. The bacterium was readily reisolated from diseased plants, confirmed to be the inoculated pathogen, and identified as Erwinia chrysanthemi. E. carotovora subsp. carotovora has been reported to cause soft rot of other calla lilies, such as Zantedeschia sp. cvs. Black Magic and Pink Persuasion and Z. elliottiana in Taiwan (1). However, to our knowledge, this is the first report of soft rot caused by E. chrysanthemi on white flowered calla lily in Taiwan. Reference: (1) S. T. Hsu and K. C. Tzeng. Pages 9–18 in: Proc. Int. Conf. Plant Path. Bact., 5th. J. C. Lozano, ed. CIAT, Cali, Colombia, 1981.
Isolates of Erwinia chrysanthemi from Zantedeschia aethiopica (white-flowered calla lily) induced symptoms of soft rot on inoculated cv. Innocence flower-stem segments. Isolates from Phalaenopsis aphrodite and potato caused mild symptoms, while those from green onion and celery produced no symptoms. In addition to pathogenicity, the isolates were further characterized at the molecular level. A specific oligonucleotide primer set was designed for the detection of the pelZ gene of E. chrysanthemi . All E. chrysanthemi isolates tested contained pelZ as determined by PCR amplification. No amplification was observed with other Erwinia spp. The pelZ of E. chrysanthemi isolate S3-1 from Z. aethiopica was cloned, sequenced and compared with the nucleotide sequence of pelZ in GenBank. A point mutation produced an Ahd I restriction site, leading to the development of a PCR-RFLP assay to discriminate white-flowered calla lily isolates from others of E. chrysanthemi . Furthermore, macrorestriction analysis by modifying a pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) protocol used by PulseNet revealed the genomic variation within E. chrysanthemi . After digestion with the restriction enzyme Xba I, white-flowered calla lily E. chrysanthemi isolates could be easily distinguished from other isolates. Differences in virulence, combined with PCR-RFLP and PFGE analyses, suggest that white-flowered calla lily E. chrysanthemi isolates are a new strain or pathotype in Taiwan.
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