Italian dandelion (Cichorium intybus) is a leafy, nonhead forming chicory plant that is eaten as a fresh vegetable in salads. During the late summer (August through October) of 2002, in the Salinas Valley (Monterey County) in California, a previously unreported disease was found in commercial Italian dandelion fields. Early symptoms were angular, vein delimited, dark, water-soaked leaf spots that measured 2 to 7 mm in diameter. As disease developed, spots retained angular edges but exhibited various irregular shapes. Spots commonly formed along the edges of the leaves; in some cases these spots developed into lesions that measured between 10 and 30 mm long. Spots were visible from adaxial and abaxial sides and were dull black in color. A cream-colored pseudomonad was consistently isolated from leaf spots that were macerated and streaked onto sucrose peptone agar. Fungi were not recovered from any of the spots. Recovered strains were blue-green fluorescent when streaked onto King's medium B agar. Bacterial strains were levan positive, oxidase negative, and arginine dihydrolase negative. Strains did not rot potato slices but induced a hypersensitive reaction on tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum cv. Turk). These data indicated that the bacteria belonged to LOPAT group 1 of Pseudomonas syringae (1). Pathogenicity of six strains was tested by growing inoculum in nutrient broth shake cultures for 48 h, diluting to 106 CFU/ml, and spraying onto 12 6-week-old plants of Italian dandelion cv. Catalogna Special. Untreated control plants were sprayed with sterile nutrient broth. After 10 to 12 days in a greenhouse (24 to 26°C), leaf spots similar to those observed in the field developed on all inoculated plants. Strains were reisolated from the spots and identified as P. syringae. Control plants remained symptomless. These inoculation experiments were done twice and the results were the same. Amplification of repetitive bacterial sequences (repetitive sequence-based polymerase chain reaction [rep-PCR]) demonstrated that all Italian dandelion strains had the same rep-PCR fingerprint, which differed from fingerprints of P. syringae pv. tagetis and P. syringae pv. tabaci. Additionally, toxin specific primers did not amplify tagetitoxin or tabtoxin biosynthesis genes from Italian dandelion strains. To our knowledge, this is the first report of bacterial leaf spot of commercially grown Italian dandelion in California caused by a P. syringae pathovar. Because fields were irrigated with overhead sprinklers, the disease was severe in several fields and as much as 30% of those plantings were not harvested.
Reference: (1) R. A. Lelliott et al. J. Appl. Bacteriol. 29:470, 1966.
