Monitoring the Reoccurrence of Fire Blight and the Eradication Efficiency of Erwinia amylovora in Burial Sites of Infected Host Plants Using Sentinel Plants

Abstract

The fire blight caused by <i>Erwinia amylovora</i> (<i>Ea</i>) was first reported in 2015 in Korea, and the disease has rapidly spread to 22 regions until 2021. In Korea, all host plants in the apple and pear orchards where fire blight occurred should be eliminated and buried by the Plant Protection Act. To prevent the spread of the disease, all burial sites were prohibited from planting the new host plants for the next three years. To confirm the eradication efficiency of <i>Ea</i> and the reoccurrence of fire blight, the surveillance facilities were established on three burial sites from 2019 to 2020 in Anseong-si, Gyeonggi-do, and Chungju-si, Chungcheongbuk-do. As host plants, five apple trees of fire blight-susceptible cultivar ‘Fuji’, were planted in each facility. All facilities were enclosed with fences and nets and equipped with two CCTVs, motion sensors, and several other sensors for recording weather conditions to monitor the environment of the sentinel plants in real-time. The sentinel plants were checked for the reoccurrence of fire blight routinely. Suspicious plant parts were collected and analyzed for <i>Ea</i> detection by loop-mediated isothermal amplification polymerase chain reaction and conventional polymerase chain reaction. Until November 2022, <i>Ea</i> has not been detected in all sentinel plants. These results might support that the burial control of infected plants in soil works efficiently to remove <i>Ea</i> and support the possibility to shorten the prohibition period of host plant establishment in the burial sites.