Soft rot of melon caused by Pectobacterium Brasiliense

Abstract

In April 2023, soft rot symptoms were observed in the stem of a melon grown in a greenhouse in Shiga prefecture, Japan. Two days after inoculation of bacteria isolated from the diseased stem into the stem of melon seedlings, soft rot symptoms were observed. A target fragment was amplified from the isolated bacteria by PCR specific to Pectobacterium brasiliense. Because multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) based on concatenated dnaX, leuS, and recA gene sequences shows the isolate and reisolates from inoculated seedlings grouped with the P. brasiliense clade, the isolate was identified as P. brasiliense. This report is the first of melon disease caused by P. brasiliense in Japan.