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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Pathogen Interactions
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1420401
This article is part of the Research Topic Infection and Colonization of Horticultural Crops by Microbial Pathogens View all 11 articles

Insight into the new infection pathway resulting from above-ground pathogen infection of grapevine crown gall

Provisionally accepted
Akira Kawaguchi Akira Kawaguchi *
  • Western Region Agricultural Research Center, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Fukuyama, Japan

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Grapevine crown gall (GCG), a soil-borne plant disease caused by tumorigenic Allorhizobium vitis (TAV) (=tumorigenic Rhizobium vitis) strains, poses a significant threat to grapevines worldwide. Recently, outbreaks of GCG have been reported in several vineyards, necessitating investigation into potential alternative infection pathways beyond soil transmission. The spatiotemporal distribution of GCG in vineyards from 2020 to 2022 was analyzed using the binary power law (BPL) model, with variations in quadrat shapes. Both total and newly observed diseased plants exhibited an aggregated distribution, indicating that new infections clustered around existing diseased plants, with secondary infections appearing as independent cluster points. This study provides evidence that infected pruning tools can transmit the pathogen to healthy grapevines and that TAV inoculation through spraying contributes more to GCG incidence than planting in infected soil alone. This represents the first documented case of secondary above-ground TAV infection contributing to GCG in commercial vineyards.

    Keywords: Allorhizobium vitis, spatiotemporal distribution, Grapevine crown gall, Secondary infection, Binary power law

    Received: 20 Apr 2024; Accepted: 10 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Kawaguchi. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Akira Kawaguchi, Western Region Agricultural Research Center, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Fukuyama, Japan

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