Quantitative and molecular epidemiology of bacterial blight of onion in seed production fields

ABSTRACT Onion, a biennial plant species, is threatened by the emerging, seed-borne, and seed-transmitted Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. allii. Bacterial blight epidemics were monitored in seed production fields over two seasons. Temporal disease progress was different between the two seasons, with final incidence ranging from 0.04 to 0.06 in 2003 and from 0.44 to 0.61 in 2004. The number of hours with temperatures above 24 degrees C was the best descriptor for predicting the number of days after inoculation for bacterial blight development on inoculated plants. Fitting the beta-binomial distribution and binary power law analysis indicated aggregated patterns of disease incidence data. The beta-binomial distribution was superior to the binomial distribution for 97% of the examined data sets. Spatial dependency ranged from 5.9 to 15.2 m, as determined by semivariance analysis. Based on amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis, it was concluded that plots predominantly were infected by the inoculated haplotype. A single other haplotype was identified by AFLP in all plots over the 2 years, and its detection in the field always followed wind-driven rains. X. axonopodis pv. allii-contaminated seed were detected by semiselective isolation and a nested polymerase chain reaction assay at levels up to 0.05% when final disease incidence was 0.61. Contaminated seed originated from both diseased and asymptomatic plants.