Phenotypic and Genotypic Characterization of Erwinia amylovora in Pome Fruit Orchards in Isfahan Province

During 2011 to 2012, different Pome orchards in Isfahan province were surveyed and the samples with fire blight symptoms such as water soaking of infected tissues, necrosis, wilt and tissue necrosis, scorched and in some cases death of the entire tree, were collected. Forty nine bacterial strains were isolated using NA, SNA and EMB media. Based on standard physiological and biochemical tests, the isolates were identified as Erwinia amylovora. In the PCR assayisolates were identified as E. amylovora, based on 1000 bp DNA fragments using A/B specific primers. In rep-PCR assay representative strains produced different fingerprints patterns using REP, ERIC, BOX primers. The results of this study demonstrated that fire blight disease is distributed in Isfahan province and collected E. amylovora strains from various regions of Isfahan province are genotypically homogenous with more than 71% similarity.