Exploring diversity among Spanish strains of Erwinia amylovora and possible infection sources

Aims:  We have examined the intraspecific diversity of a collection of 63 Spanish strains of Erwinia amylovora, isolated from 1995 to 2001, to determine whether or not they could be grouped based on phenotypic or genotypic criteria and to investigate the sources of inoculum for fire blight dissemination in Spain. Methods and Results:  Several biochemical and molecular techniques, such as miniaturized API 20E, API 50CH, ATB G-5 and API-ZYM tests, BIOLOG metabolic fingerprinting, PCR ribotyping, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE), minisatellite-primed PCR (MSP-PCR), random amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analyses and AFLP were used. We report the first identification in Spain of the PFG…