MLST reveals a separate and novel clonal group for Acidovorax avenae strains causing red stripe in sugarcane from Argentina

FONTANA, PAOLA; TOMASINI, NICOLAS; FONTANA, CECILIA; DI PAULI, VALENTINA; COCCONCELLI, PIER SANDRO; VIGNOLO, GRACIELA, .; SALAZAR, SERGIO

PHYTOPATHOLOGY

AMER PHYTOPATHOLOGICAL SOC

Año: 2018 vol. 109 p. 358 - 365

0031-949X

Acidovorax spp. cause a wide range of economically important diseases inmonocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants, including sugarcane, corn,rice, oat, millet, foxtail watermelon, and orchid. In Argentina, the red stripedisease of sugarcane caused by Acidovorax avenae affects 30% of themilling stems with important economic losses. To explore the geneticdiversity of this bacterium associated with red stripe in Argentina, multilocussequence typing (MLST) was applied. This study included 15 local strainsisolated from four different sugarcane planting regions and selected afterrandom amplified polymorphic DNA analysis and reference strains ofA. citrulli, A. avenae, and A. oryzae to investigate their phylogenetic relationships. MLST analysis resulted in five sequence types among the sugarcaneA. avenae strains which constitute a clonal complex, meaning a commonand close origin. Sugarcane strains were related to A. avenae from otherhosts and distant to A. citrulli. Signals of frequent recombination inseveral lineages of A. avenae was detected and we observed that A. oryzaeis closely related to A. avenae strains. This study provides valuable data inthe field of epidemiological and evolutionary investigations of novelclone of A. avenae strains causing sugarcane red stripe. The knowledge ofthe genetic diversity and strain-host specificity are important to select thegenotypes with the best response to the red stripe disease.