In November 2008, betelvines (Piper betle L., Piperaceae) exhibiting leaf blight symptoms were observed in central Taiwan. Infections resulted in a 30 to 70% loss of leaf yield in the investigated betel leaf-producing facilities. Symptoms began with small, necrotic, water-soaked spots that progressed to circular to irregularly shaped brown lesions, 5 to 10 mm in diameter, with chlorotic halos on leaves; some lesions started from the edge of leaves and later fused to form dried, necrotic margins. Bacteria-like streaming fluid was visible from the edges of freshly cut lesions at the junctions of chlorotic and necrotic leaf tissues when observed with a light microscope at ×100. When the streaming fluid was streaked onto King's medium B (3), a slow-growing, gram-negative, nonfluorescent bacterium was identified from the whitish colonies that consistently developed on the medium. Five bacterial isolates from three lesions were characterized with fatty acid methyl ester analysis (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA) and Sherlock Microbial Identification System (Microbial IDentification Inc., Newark, DE), and for each isolate, the bacterium was confirmed as Acidovorax avenae subsp. citrulli with a similarity index >0.70. In addition, the Biolog system (Biolog, Hayward, CA) and 16S ribosomal RNA sequence identity comparison were performed to confirm that the five betelvine-isolated bacteria were A. avenae subsp. citrulli based on a similarity of 0.54 with Biolog and 99% sequence identity for 16S rRNA gene. Koch's postulates were fulfilled by infiltrating a bacterial suspension of 3 × 105 CFU/ml into 40 leaves of four greenhouse-grown, disease-free, mature betelvine plants. After inoculation, plants were kept in a humidified greenhouse at 28°C to favor symptom development and symptoms similar to those observed in the greenhouse were evident at 7 days post inoculation (dpi) on all bacterium-infiltrated leaves. Control leaves infiltrated with distilled water remained symptomless. Bacteria showing morphological and biochemical similarities (2) to the ones used for inoculation were isolated from all of the inoculated betelvine leaves. In addition, a bacterial suspension at 3 × 108 CFU/ml was sprayed at the amount of 5 ml per plant onto 6 to 10 plants each of 4-week-old disease-free seedlings of watermelon (Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum & Nakai, cv. Empire No. 2), oriental sweet melon (Cucumis melo L. var. saccharinus Naudin, cv. Silver Beam), and waxgourd (Benincasa hispida (Thunb.) Cogn., cv. Cheerer) for bioassays, and the inoculated seedlings were enclosed in plastic bags for 36 h at 28°C. Water-soaked lesions were observed on leaves of watermelon and waxgourd at 2 dpi and on sweet melon at 4 dpi on all inoculated plants but not on distilled water-sprayed control plants, indicating that A. avenae subsp. citrulli strains from betelvine could also infect melon plants. A. avenae subsp. citrulli was previously identified as the causal agent of bacterial fruit blotch on melon and bitter gourd in Taiwan (1). To our knowledge, this is the first report that A. avenae subsp. citrulli can naturally infect betelvine, a noncucurbit crop, to elicit bacterial leaf blight disease.
References: (1) A.-H. Cheng and T.-C. Huang. Plant Pathol. Bull. 7:216, 1998. (2) J. B. Jones et al. Page 121 in: Laboratory Guide for Identification of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria. 3rd ed. The American Phytopathological Society, St. Paul, MN, 2001. (3) E. O. King et al. J. Lab. Clin. Med. 44:301, 1954.
