Emergence of apple bacterial quick decline caused by Dickeya dadantii in Japan

Abstract

Since 2014 in some parts of Iwate Prefecture in Japan, an apple disease called quick decline (QD) has been reported. The causal agent was isolated from tissues with visible QD symptoms and identified as the soft-rot pathogen Dickeya dadantii by morphological, physiological, biochemical, phenotypic and genetic characterizations. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of apple QD disease caused by D. dadantii in Japan and in the world. Here, we propose calling this disease apple bacterial quick decline to distinguish from other diseases and physiological disorders.