About 200 isolates of the bacterial blight pathogen Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae were obtained from infected rice (Oryza sativa L.) leaf samples from the Palghat District of Kerala State in southern India during January and February, 1998, when there was a severe epidemic of bacterial blight in the farmers' fields. One hundred and forty of these isolates were assayed for pathogenicity on rice cv. IR24 (no R gene), IRBB21 (Xa21), and NH56 (Xa4+xa5+xa13+Xa21) at their maximum tillering stage by the standard clip-inoculation technique (1) at the Regional Agricultural Research Station (Kerala Agricultural University), Pattambi. In two separate experiments, all the isolates were found to be pathogenic to IR24, producing lesions greater than 10 cm in length. None of the isolates induced susceptible symptoms on cv. NH56 and the average lesion length was less than 2 cm. Twenty of the 140 isolates, however, showed virulence to IRBB21 (seeds supplied by S. R. McCouch, Cornell University, and by P. Ronald, University of California-Davis) and induced lesions of 10.0 to 18.0 cm. We report here the presence of Indian races of X. oryzae pv. oryzae that are virulent to IRBB21 (Xa21), contradicting an earlier report of avirulence (2). These results suggest that the deployment of Xa21 alone will not be a sound strategy for the management of bacterial blight in southern India.
References: (1) S. S. Gnanamanickam et al. Plant Dis. 78:173, 1994. (2) G.-L.Wang et al. Mol. Plant-Microbe Interact. 9:850, 1996.
