Methods for the Determination of Fire Blight on Pome Fruit Crop Plants in the Western Part of Azerbaijan

Abstract

Fire blight caused by Erwinia amylovora (Burrill, 1882) Winslow et al., 1920 causes significant production losses in the world’s leading pome fruit crop producing countries. The main route of infection of many fruit crops, including apple and pear trees, is through newly blooming flowers. The bacterium overwinters in the bark tissue along the edges of cankers formed on branches and stems as a result of infection in the previous year and becomes a source of infection in the next year. Determining the prevalence of the disease in areas with a large number of orchards is important from the point of view of disease control. Therefore, the purpose of the work is to study the prevalence of the disease in the Ganja-Dashkesan and Gazakh-Tovuz Economic Regions, as well as the accurate diagnosis of the obtained E. amylovora isolates using classical and molecular methods. For this purpose, trees in the studied apple and pear orchards were examined for the disease, the pathogen was isolated from infected plants, and morphological, biochemical, physiological and molecular analyzes were carried out. Among 36 bacterial isolates obtained from 27 samples of infected plants, Erwinia amylovora was identified in 11 as a result of morphological, biochemical, physiological and molecular tests.