First Report of Bacterial Leaf Spot Disease of Broussonetia papyrifera Caused by Pseudomonas syringae pv. actinidiae in China

Broussonetia papyrifera (paper mulberry) is a deciduous tree with a number of uses and is native to northeastern Asia. Because of its fast-growing nature and high tolerance to dust, smoke, and high temperatures, paper mulberry is regarded as an important and economically-valuable component of a biologically diverse community and is used extensively in several areas including medicine, animal husbandry, paper making, weaving, afforestation and light industry (Mei et al. 2016). From June to August of 2019, symptoms on paper mulberry trees were observed in Shiniushan village, Sanhua town, Xishui County, Hubei province of China. Typical symptoms on leaves included small, angular, brown spots surrounded by yellow haloes. These spots coalesced into necrotic areas. The incidence was around 30%, which threatened the survival and reduced the yield of paper mulberry. In order to identify the causal pathogenic organism, leaf samples from 10 different infected trees were collected every two weeks and isolations made over three months. Several circular, flat, granulated colonies with entire margins were isolated on King's B medium (KB). The biochemical and physiological characteristics of thirty typical strains were tested and listed as following: gram negative, aerobic, rod shaped, and non-fluorescent on King's B medium; positive for carbohydrate utilization (sucrose, glucose, fructose and arabinose), levan production, hypersensitive on tobacco, potato and tomato; and negative for oxidase, arginine dehydrolase, tyrosinase and urease activity, gelatin liquefaction, and reduction of nitrate. Psa pathovar-specific primers PsaF1/PsaR2 (280bp product ) identified two representative strains as Psa (Rees-George et al. 2010). BLAST analysis further confirmed that the 16S rDNA region amplified by primers 27F/1492R (NCBI accession nos. MT472100 and MT472101) shared 99.84% and 99.77% identity with the Psa type strain ICMP 18884 (CP011972) respectively (Weisburg et al. 1991). For ten typical strains, pathogenicity was confirmed by spraying a bacterial suspension (108 cfu/mL) onto fifty one-year seedlings of B. papyrifera, five seedlings repetitions for each strain. Symptoms of infection similar to those observed initially in the field were detected within 7 days after incubation at 25°C with 80-85% humidity. No symptoms were observed on control plants. The pathogen was re-isolated from symptomatic leaves and re-identified as Psa by morphological characteristics and sequencing. To our knowledge, this is the first report of Psa causing bacterial leaf spot disease on B. papyrifera, China. Psa has been reported as a pathogen causing bacterial canker of kiwifruit worldwide, resulting in severe economic losses to kiwifruit growers (McCann & Li, 2017). As a host of Psa, B. papyrifera may be a source of inoculum for nearby kiwifruit orchards, and consequently effective control measures should be taken to manage this disease. Funding: This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31701974; 31901980), Science and technology program funded by Wuhan Science and Technology Bureau (2018020401011307). References: Mei et al. 2016. Eur J Plant Pathol. 145: 203. McCann & Li et al. 2017. Genome Biol Evol. 9: 932. Rees-George et al. 2010. Plant Pathol. 59: 453 Weisburg et al. 1991. J Bacteriol. 173: 697.

Keywords: Causal Agent; Crop Type; Fruit; Pathogen detection; Prokaryotes; Subject Areas; small fruits.