PLANT DISEASES

CAUSED BY BACTERIA,
VIRUSES AND VIROIDS
PLANT DISEASES CAUSED BY
BACTERIA
• Of all the organisms, bacteria are the most closely related to man’s life.
• About 1,600 bacterial species are known, out of which 50% are true bacteria.
• Most are strictly saprophytic and as such are beneficial to humans because
they help decompose the enormous quantities of organic matter produced
yearly by humans, animals, and factories as waste products or by the death
of plants and animals.
• Several species cause diseases in humans, including tuberculosis, pneumonia,
and typhoid fever, and a similar number cause diseases in animals, such as
brucellosis and anthrax.
• About 100 species of bacteria cause diseases in plants.
• Most plant pathogenic bacteria are facultative saprophytes and can be grown
artificially on nutrient media; however, fastidious vascular bacteria are
difficult to grow in culture and some of them have yet to be grown in culture.
 Characteristics of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria
Morphology
• The average size of bacteria is about 1.25 micrometers (µm) in diameter, the smallest is
rod-shaped which measures 0.15 µm, almost touching the limit of visibility, while the
largest is Spirillum volutans measuring upto 15 µm and 1.5 µm in diameter.
• Most plant pathogenic bacteria are rod shaped, the only exception being Streptomyces,
which is filamentous. In young cultures, bacteria range from 0.6 to 3.5 µm in diameter.
• In older cultures or at high temperatures, the rods may be longer, even filamentous,
and they may form a club, Y, or V shape.
• The cell walls of bacteria of most species are enveloped by a viscous, gummy material,
which, if thin and diffuse, is called a slime layer, but if thick, forming a definitive mass
around the cell, is called a capsule.
• Most plant pathogenic bacteria have delicate, thread-like flagella, considerably longer
than the cells on which they are produced.
• In some bacterial species, each bacterium has only one flagellum, whereas others have
a tuft of flagella at one end of the cell (polar flagella); still others have peritrichous
flagella, i.e., distributed over the entire surface of the cell.
• Bacteria may be rod shaped (Bacillus), spherical (Coccus), spiral (Spirillum), or
curved (Vibrio).
• Some bacteria can move through liquid media by means of flagella, whereas
others have no flagella and cannot move themselves.
• Some can transform themselves into spores, and the filamentous bacteria
Streptomyces can produce spores, called conidia, at the end of the filament.
Other bacteria, however, do not produce any spores.
• The vegetative stages of most types of bacteria reproduce by simple fission.
Bacteria multiply with astonishing rapidity, and their significance as pathogens
stems primarily from the fact that they can produce tremendous numbers of
cells in a short period of time.
• Bacterial diseases of plants occur in every place that is reasonably moist or
warm, and they affect all kinds of plants.
• Bacterial diseases are particularly common and severe in the humid tropics,
but under favorable environmental conditions they may be extremely
destructive anywhere.
Identification of Bacteria
The main characteristics of some of the most common plant pathogenic
genera of bacteria are as follows:
Agrobacterium: Bacteria are rod shaped, 0.8 by 1.5–3 µm. They are motile by
means of one to four peritrichous flagella; when only one flagellum is present,
it is more often lateral than polar.
Clavibacter (Corynebacterium): Cells have the shape of straight to slightly
curved rods, 0.5–0.9 by 1.5–4 µm. They are gram positive.
Erwinia: Bacteria are straight rods, 0.5–1.0 by 1.0–3.0 µm, and are motile by
means of several to many peritrichous flagella.
Pseudomonas: Pseudomonads are straight to curved rods, 0.5–1 by 1.5–4
µm. They are motile by means of one or many polar flagella. Plant pathogenic
Pseudomonas species (e.g., P. syringae), when grown on a medium of low iron
content, produce yellow-green, diffusible, fluorescent pigments.
• Ralstonia: Until very recently classified as Pseudomonas, these resemble the
latter in most respects with the important difference that its cells do not
produce fluorescent pigments.
• Xanthomonas: Cells are straight rods, 0.4–1.0 by 1.2–3 µm, and are motile by
means of a polar flagellum. All species are plant pathogens and are found only
in association with plants or plant materials.
• Streptomyces: Bacteria have the shape of slender, branched hyphae without
cross walls, 0.5–2 µm in diameter. At maturity the aerial mycelium forms
chains of three to many spores. They also produce one or more antibiotics
active against bacteria, fungi, algae, viruses, protozoa, or tumor tissues. All
species are soil inhabitants. They are gram positive.
• Xylella: Cells are mostly single, straight rods, 0.3 by 1–4 µm, producing long
filamentous strands under some cultural conditions. Colonies are small, with
smooth or finely undulated margins. Nutritionally fastidious, Xylella require
specialized media; their habitat is xylem of plant tissue. They are gram
negative, non-motile, aflagellate, strictly aerobic, and non-pigmented.
Symptoms Caused by Bacteria
• Plant pathogenic bacteria induce as many kinds of symptoms on the
plants they infect as do fungi.
• They cause leaf spots and blights,
• soft rots of fruits, roots, and storage organs
• wilts,
• overgrowths,
• scabs and cankers.
Any given type of symptom can be caused by bacterial pathogens belonging to
several genera, and each genus may contain pathogens capable of causing
different types of diseases.

Species of Agrobacterium, however, can cause only overgrowths or proliferation

of organs. However, overgrowths can also be caused by certain species of
Rhodococcus and Pseudomonas.
Control of Bacterial Diseases of Plants
• Bacterial diseases of plants are usually very difficult to control.
• Frequently, a combination of control measures is required to combat
a given bacterial disease.
• Using only healthy seeds or transplants.
• Sanitation practices.
• Adjusting fertilizing and watering so that the plants are not extremely
succulent
• Crop rotation
• Use of disease resistant varieties
• Use of chemical as spray, seed treatments, dips
• Biological control
Diseases caused by Viruses
• A virus is an obligate intracellular parasite that does not have the molecular machinery to
replicate without the host.
• It can also be defined as a nucleoprotein that multiplies only in living cells and has the
ability to cause disease.
• It is too small to be seen individually with a light microscope but can only be seen using
an electron microscope.
• All viruses parasitize cells and cause a multitude of diseases in all forms of living
organisms.
• Some viruses attack humans, animals, or both and cause such diseases as influenza,
polio, rabies, smallpox, acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and warts; others
attack higher plants; and still others attack microorganisms, such as fungi and bacteria.
• The total number of viruses known to date exceeds 2,000, and new viruses are described
almost every month. Nearly half of all known viruses attack and cause diseases in plants.
• One virus may infect one or dozens of different species of plants,
and each species of plant is usually attacked by many different kinds
of viruses.
• A plant may sometimes be infected by more than one kind of virus
at the same time.
• Although viruses behave like microorganisms in that they have
genetic functions, are able to reproduce, and cause disease, they
also behave as chemical molecules.
• At their simplest, viruses consist of nucleic acid and protein, with
the protein forming a protective coat around the nucleic acid.
• Although viruses can take any of several forms, they are mostly rod
shaped, polyhedral, or variants of these two basic structures.
• In each virus, there is always only RNA or only DNA and, in most
plant viruses, there is only one kind of protein.
Characteristics of Plant Viruses
• Morphology: Plant viruses come in different shapes and sizes. Nearly
half of them are elongate (rigid rods or flexuous threads), and almost as
many are spherical (isometric or polyhedral), with the remaining being
cylindrical bacillus-like rods. Some elongated viruses are rigid rods about
15 by 300 nanometers, but most appear as long, thin, flexible threads
that are usually 10 to 13 nanometers wide and range in length from 480
to 2,000 nanometers
• Composition and Structure: Each plant virus consists of at least a
nucleic acid and a protein. Some viruses consist of more than one size of
nucleic acid and proteins, and some of them contain enzymes or
membrane lipids. The nucleic acid makes up 5 to 40% of the virus,
protein making up the remaining 60 to 95%. The lower nucleic acid
percentages are found in the elongated viruses, whereas the spherical
viruses contain higher percentages of nucleic acid
Symptoms Caused by Plant Viruses
• Almost all viral diseases seem to cause some degree of dwarfing or stunting of the entire plant
and reduction in total yield.
• Viruses usually shorten the length of life of virus-infected plants, although they rarely kill plants
on infection.
• These effects may be severe and striking in appearance or they may be very slight and easily
overlooked.
• The most obvious symptoms of virus-infected plants are usually those appearing on the leaves,
but some viruses may cause striking symptoms on the stem, fruit, and roots while they may or
may not cause any symptom development on the leaves.
• In almost all virus diseases of plants occurring in the field, the virus is present throughout the
plant (systemic infection) and induces the formation of systemic symptoms.
• In many plants inoculated artificially with certain viruses, the virus causes the formation of
small, chlorotic or necrotic lesions only at the points of entry (local infections), and the
symptoms are called local lesions.
• However, many viruses infect certain hosts without causing development of visible symptoms
on them. Such viruses are usually called latent viruses, and the hosts are called symptomless
carriers.
• In other cases, however, plants that usually develop symptoms on infection
with a certain virus may remain temporarily symptomless under certain
environmental conditions (e.g., high or low temperature), and such symptoms
are called masked.
• Plants may also show acute severe symptoms soon after inoculation that may
lead to death of young shoots or of the entire host plant; if the host survives
the initial shock phase, the symptoms tend to become milder (chronic
symptoms) in the subsequently developing parts of the plant, leading to partial
or even total recovery.
• The most common types of plant symptoms produced by systemic virus
infections are mosaics and ring spots.
• Depending on the intensity or pattern of discolorations, mosaic-type symptoms
may be described as mottling, streak, ring pattern, line pattern, vein-clearing,
vein-banding, or chlorotic spotting.
• Ring spots are characterized by the appearance of chlorotic or necrotic rings on
the leaves and sometimes also on the fruit and stem.
Transmission of Plant Viruses
• Plant viruses are transmitted from plant to plant in a number
of ways.
• Modes of transmission include
• vegetative propagation,
• mechanically through sap,
• through seed,
• pollen,
• dodder, and
• By vectors through specific insects, mites, nematodes, and
fungi.
 Plant Diseases Caused by Viroids
To date, at least 40 plant diseases have been shown to be caused by viroids.
The most important viroid plant diseases are cadang-cadang disease of coconut,
potato spindle tuber, citrus exocortis, avocado sunblotch, chrysanthemum stunt,
and apple scar skin.
Viroids are small, low molecular weight ribonucleic acids that can infect plant
cells, replicate themselves, and cause disease.
Viroids differ from viruses in at least two main characteristics:
(1) the size of RNA in 13 viroids, which consists of 250 to 370 bases, is much
smaller compared to that in viruses, which is 4 to 20 kilobases, and
(2) the fact that virus RNA is enclosed in a protein coat whereas viroids lack a
protein coat and apparently exist as free (naked) RNA. Because of their small
size (250–370 nucleotides), viroids lack sufficient information to code for even
one protein, even for a replicase enzyme required to replicate the viroid.
• Viroids are spread from diseased to healthy plants primarily by mechanical means, i.e.,
through sap carried on hands or tools during propagation or cultural practices and, of
course, by vegetative propagation.
• Some, such as potato spindle tuber, chrysanthemum stunt, and chrysanthemum
chlorotic mottle viroids, are transmitted through sap quite readily, whereas others, such
as citrus excortis viroid, are transmitted through sap with some difficulty.
• Several viroids, e.g., those causing potato spindle tuber, cadang-cadang, tomato bunchy
top, and apple scar skin, appear to be transmitted through the pollen and seed, but the
rates of such trans-mission are usually very small.
• No specific insect or other vectors of viroids are known, although viroids seem to be
transmitted on the mouthparts or feet of some insects.
• Viroids apparently survive in nature outside the host or in dead plant matter for periods
of time varying from a few minutes to a few months.
• Viroids are usually quite resistant to high temperatures and cannot be inactivated in
infected plants by heat treatment.
• The control of diseases caused by viroids is based on the use of viroid-free propagating
stock, removal and destruction of viroid-infected plants, and washing of hands or
sterilizing of tools after handling viroid-infected plants before moving on to healthy
plants