Development of Genome-Directed, PCR-Based Molecular Diagnostic System for Soft Rot Bacteria

Pectobacterium spp and Dickeya spp are phytopathogenic bacteria that cause soft rot disease. Identification of soft rot pathogen is difficult with visual disease symptoms. This is especially true when different pathogen cause similar diseases in different plants. There are numerous soft rot pathogen detection methods based on culture and morphological identification but they are time-consuming, and not always reliable. A PCR-based diagnostic method with the species-specific primer pairs is fast, and reliable to detect soft rot pathogen. This study uses three pairs of species-specific primers to develop a diagnostic system for soft rot bacterial pathogens in the Pectobacterium and Dickeya species. The specificity of the primers was verified by PCR analysis of genomic DNA from 14 strains of Pectobacterium, 8 strains of Dickeya, and 6 strains of non-soft rot bacteria. This species-specific PCR assay provides quick, simple, powerful, and reliable detection of soft rot bacteria