STUDY ON SURVIVAL STRATEGY OF SOFT ROT DISEASE BACTERIA OF VEGETABLES

To control plant disease, understanding the life cycle of its pathogen is necessary. Especially, soil-borne pathogens can live long time under severe, starving conditions, such as in the soil, and it is important to elucidate their mechanism for the survival. We have been studying the Viable But Non-Culturable (VBNC) state of Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. carotovorum (Pcc), a soil-borne pathogen which causes soft rot disease of many kinds of vegetable plants. VBNC is thought to be a kind of starvation adaptation. In this study, we examined the morphological changes of the bacterial cells when transferred to starving conditions, and analyzed the expression of four genes, which are regarded as starvation response genes by real time PCR