Isolation of the Causal Bacterium of Red Stripe of Rice

News source: National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, Japan
For further information, see Kaku, H., Ochiai, H.: The causal bacterium of red stripe of rice. In: Plant Pathogenic Bacteria. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, Netherlands, 2001, pp. 249-251., 2002-07-01

Causal Pathogen of Red Stripe

Red stripe in rice has become a problem in South-East Asia. The causal pathogens are gram-positive bacteria which belong to the Microbacterium genus, as seen from the analysis of its 16S rDNA sequence.

Red Stripe Problem in Tropical Asia

Red stripe in rice plants was reported first in Indonesia in 1987. It has since become a problem in tropical countries such as Vietnam, Thailand and the Philippines. It is one of the most widespread and destructive diseases of rice plants in tropical Asia.

This disease was initially named Bacterial Red Stripe. However, since the pathogenic bacteria causing this disease could not be identified, the theory arose that the pathogen was a mold. Until now, the species of the pathogen has not been identified.

Isolation of Bacteria

Bacteria were isolated from samples of rice plants with red stripe collected in Indonesia. Although various types of bacteria were separated from pathological lesions, only isolated stock which formed a colony with a transparent albedo showed pathogenicity by the multi-needle method. A reddish-brown spot appeared as the manifest symptom expression, as well as the typical symptom expression.

Characteristics of Bacterium

The following was the result obtained for the isolated stock RS-10 which showed pathogenicity, based on its 16S rDNA sequence and comparison with sequences of known species from database. It showed the highest homology (95.6 _ 98.7) with species belonging to the Microbacterium genus.

Download the PDF. of this document, 28,554 bytes (27.9 KB).