Author(s)

Asma Akbar¹, Musharaf Ahmad¹,   Azra²,   Neelam³, Sana Zeb Khan⁴, Zahoor Ahmad^5,6*

¹Department of Plant Pathology, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan.
²Department of Plant Pathology, Amir Muhammad Khan Campus, Mardan, Pakistan.
³Department of Biochemistry, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan.
⁴Department of Plant Protection, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar, Pakistan.
⁵Department of Plant Pathology, College of Plant Science and Technology and the Key Lab of Crop Disease Monitoring & Safety Control in Hubei Province, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China.
⁶Department of Adaptive Research, Quetta, Balochistan, Pakistan.

To isolate the causal organism of soft rot of vegetables, diseased samples of potato, tomato, carrot, chilies, and bell pepper, were analyzed in the lab, using nutrient agar (NA) and/or the enrichment host (Bell pepper) technique. Successful isolations were purified by sub-culturing, identified as Erwinia carotovora subsp. carotovora through biochemical tests and their pathogenicity was confirmed through inoculation on green tomato fruits. The isolates were tested for their aggressiveness to find out the most aggressive one in term of producing maximum soft rot on tomatoes. CRD (completely randomized design), with four replication was used and data were analyzed using LSD (least significant test) test. Among the five isolates evaluated for aggressiveness on tomato fruits, chili isolate was found to be the most aggressive followed by tomato and potato isolates producing 22.3 mm, 7.9 mm, and 7.8 mm diameter soft rot lesions, respectively.

Aggressiveness, Bio-Chemical Tests, Erwinia carotovora, Pathogencity, Soft Rot of Tomatoes

Akbar, A. , Ahmad, M. , Azra, &. , Neelam, &. , Khan, S. and Ahmad, Z. (2015) Characterization of the Causal Organism of Soft Rot of Tomatoes and Other Vegetables and Evaluation of Its Most Aggressive Isolates. American Journal of Plant Sciences, 6, 511-517. doi: 10.4236/ajps.2015.64055.