Genetic diversity analysis of Acidovorax citrulli in China

Acidovorax citrulli has become quite common in China. A collection of 118 strains of A. citrulli was made from throughout China and other countries to determine their genetic relatedness. Strains were identified as A. citrulli by pathogenicity, phenotypic characterization, and PCR. Genetic diversity was determined using pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and multilocus sequence typing (MLST). PFGE electrophoresis resulted in nine genotypes, which could be typed into two groups based on host; group 1 included strains mainly from melon and group 2 included strains mainly from watermelon. MLST analysis resulted in 73 sequence types (ST) among the 118 A. citrulli strains. All A. citrulli strains were typed into three groups: group 1 with 82 strains (including type strain Fc247), group 2 with 35 strains and group 3 a singleton (Fc380). Similar to PFGE results, group 1 included strains mainly from melon and group 2 included strains mainly from watermelon. The difference was the 10 watermelon strains (pslbtw1-3, 5–11) from Beijing grouped with melon strains of group 1 based on MLST, suggesting that these 10 watermelon strains had a close relationship with melon. Our study indicated that there was genetic differentiation among A. citrulli strains between watermelon and melon. Also, our study was the first attempt to compare PFGE and MLST on analyzing genetic diversity of A. citrulli strains and proved MLST could better distinguish A. citrulli strains.