| Summary: | The detection of low numbers of plant pathogenic bacteria can be improved by using a combination of enrichment in selective media and specific monoclonal antibodies (mab) or specific primers. In this way, the enrichment increases the number of the target bacteria and the specific probes can accurately identify them in spite of some increase of the total bacterial population in the samples. The enrichment step must be optimised for each bacterium by defining the medium, time, temperature and incubation conditions in order to obtain high numbers of the target bacterium that will easily detected by the specific probes in a second step. Such procedures have been applied to the detection of Agrobacterium tumefaciens causal agent of crown gall, and to the detection of Erwinia carotovora subsp. atroseptica casual agent of potato black leg and E. amylovora casual agent of fire blight.
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