A widely distributed lineage of Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae in India mayhave come from native wild rice

Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae causes bacterial leaf blight, a serious disea se of rice. We have collected leaf blight-affected samples from wild rice ( Oryza nivara) plants growing naturally at 22 locations in five revenue dist ricts (Nalgonda, Ranga Reddy, Medak, Nizamabad, and Adilabad) in the Telang ana Region of Andhra Pradesh India. Pathotype analysis on a set of differen tial rice cultivars and DNA fingerprinting with two multilocus restriction fragment length polymorphism probes indicated that the X. oryzae pv. oryzae strains from the O. nivara plants belonged to a pathotype and lineage prev iously widely distributed among cultivated rice in India. This suggests tha t the lineage may be native to wild rice and may have been transferred subs equently to cultivated rice plants.