Abstract
The detection of the pathogen of bacterial grain rot of rice, Burkholderia glumae, from agro-environmental water using selective media is difficult, because the water generally contains a very low concentration of the targeting pathogen. A new procedure was devised using membrane filtration and enrichment culture followed by PCR. A PCR primer set, PGF 1 (5'-TGTCTGACACGGAACACCTGGGTAG-3') and PPR1 (5'-AGGTTGAGTTCTCGCATTTGTGCCG-3'), was designed for specific amplification of the 16S-23S rDNA spacer region in B. glumae. The procedure made possible the detection of B. glumae from 1000ml of irrigation water inoculated with approximately 100 cfu of the pathogen. We tested this procedure for various samples of agro-environmental water. B. glumae was detected from some samples of paddy water, irrigation water, river water and lake water from May through November. When the method was used on 30 species of volunteer plants in or around paddy fields with bacterial grain rot, B. glumae was detected from one plant of Monochoria vaginalis.
