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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Current Technologies for Pseudomonas spp. And Ralstonia solanacearum Detection and Molecular Typing

subject

description

Standard protocols for detection of phytopathogenic Pseudomonas spp. and Ralstonia solanacearum in plant material, soil, water or other sources, often still rely on the isolation of bacterial colonies on appropriate media, and/or on the use of serological techniques. However, over the last several years, molecular techniques, mainly based on PCR methods after extraction of nucleic acids from samples, have improved enough to allow a more rapid, reliable detection of these bacteria. When maximum accuracy is required the use of multiple techniques in an integrated approach is advised. Other promising technologies like flow cytometry, electronic nose or microarrays are emerging due to the need for developing more rapid high throughput detection methods. Molecular typing methods are very useful to study intra-specific diversity, to identify sources of inoculum and to track the spread of the infections, although phenotypic methods are also used. Several reliable molecular techniques including AFLP, BOX, ERIC and rep-PCR, IS-RFLP, MLST, and macrorestriction-PFGE are available. However there is no single technique that can be recommended and poly- phasic analyses have provided to be most useful. The diversity of Spanish strains of R. solanacearum and P. savastanoi pv. savastanoi analysed by several techniques is discussed in detail.