Disease Note

Soybean Bud Proliferation of Unknown Etiology in Arkansas. J. L. Dale, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville 72701. H. J. Walters, Department of Plant Pathology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville 72701. Plant Dis. 69:811. Accepted for publication 23 May 1985. Copyright 1985 The American Phytopathological Society. DOI: 10.1094/PD-69-811f.

Soybeans (Glycine max (L.) Merr.) with delayed plant senescence and proliferation of small, undeveloped pods were observed in northwestern Arkansas in 1984. The plants, which did not show machismo symptoms, resembled soybeans with bud proliferation (SBP) reported from Louisiana in which bodies suggestive of mycoplasma were associated. Attempts in previous years to mechanically transmit virus from SBP-affected plants from central Arkansas did not succeed. In 1984, tissues from leaf veins, petioles, pulvini and pod pedicels, and small roots were prepared for electron microscopic examination to determine whether mycoplasmalike bodies were associated with Arkansas plants showing SBP; 15 samples from 14 plants were negative for mycoplasma. Seven tissue samples from two plants collected and embedded in 1979 were also negative for mycoplasma. The etiology of SBP in Arkansas remains unknown.