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Title: PREVALENCE OF ASTER YELLOWS (AY) AND ELM YELLOWS (EY) GROUP PHYTOPLASMAS IN GRAPEVINES WITH SYMPTOMS CHARACTERISTIC OF GRAPEVINE YELLOWS (GY) IN THREE AREAS OF NORTHERN ITALY

Author
item BIANCO, P - INSTIT. OF PATH., ITALY
item Davis, Robert
item CASATI, P - INSTIT. OF PATH., ITALY
item FORTUSINI, A - INSTIT. OF PATH., ITALY

Submitted to: Vitis
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/30/1996
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary: Tiny microbes called phytoplasmas (formerly called mycoplasmalike organisms) are responsible for many diseases of plants around the world. These diseases reduce product quality, engender quarantine/export restrictions, and reduce farmer profits in crops including field, fruit, vegetable, plantation, and ornamental crops, and forest and landscape trees. In Italy and elsewhere in Europe, grapevines suffer from serious disease problems collectively known as grapevine yellows, which has been linked to phytoplasma. Several different grapevine yellows diseases exist that can be linked to several distinctly different phytoplasmas. Two or more of these phytoplasmas can occur in grapevines growing in a single geographical region, but little or no information has been available on the relative prevalence of such phytoplasmas in the same region. In this paper, we report finding the flavescence doree disease as well as another grapevine yellows phytoplasma in grapevines in northern Italy, and we describe the relative prevalence of these distinct phytoplasmas in grapevines growing in three Italian provinces. The information should benefit grape producers, diagnosticians, and scientists in Italy and elsewhere to control the spread of grapevine yellows disease problems.

Technical Abstract: Grapevine yellows (GY) and Flavescence doree (FD) are two important diseases that occur in northern Italy as previously published. In this work we report the results of an extended survey including grapevine samples collected on field, in two different periods (end of June and beginning of August), in three provinces of northern Italy (Vicenza, Brescia and Pavia). Direct PCR tests with group-specific oligonucleotide primer pairs for amplification of 16SrI (aster yellows and related phytoplasmas), 16SrIII (X-disease and related phytoplasmas) and 16SrV (elm yellows and related phytoplasmas) phytoplasma groups were conducted. Phytoplasmas related to elm yellows group have been detected on grapevine samples from Vicenza province; phytoplasmas belonging to 16SrI-G subgroup have been identified by RFLP analysis of r16S DNA amplicons obtained by PCR tests conducted on extracted DNAs from grapevine samples collected in each provinces. These results show that phytoplasmas belonging to 16SrV group are present only in Vicenza province while phytoplasmas in a 16SrI group were found in all the grapevine samples collected in all three provinces of northern Italy.