First Report of Pseudomonas mosselii Causing White Blotch Disease in Pleurotus pulmonarius in China

Pleurotus pulmonarius is a popular and widely cultivated edible mushroom in China. In November 2021, white blotch disease (3% incidence) was observed on the cap of P. pulmonarius, growing in a mushroom farm in Nanning, China. Initially, white blotch (0.7-1.6 cm) appeared on the cap of the young P. pulmonarius, which expanded gradually as the cap grew. However, the fruiting bodies still grew well without rotting. The pathogen causing this phenomenon was isolated from infected cap tissues using a dilution plate technique, sections of tissue (approximately 5×5×5 mm) with white blotch were rinsed three times in sterile deionized water, then, mashed in the sterile 2 ml eppendorf tubes, 1000µl sterile water was added and the suspension was diluted into eight concentrations (10-1~10-8). From each concentration, 120µl suspension was spread on Luria Bertani (LB) medium and incubated for 24 hours at 28°C. Both 10-5 and 10-6 suspensions had single colonies, the dominant single colonies were picked and purified 2-3 times. The purified colonies were round, beige, and opaque, with a raised center and regular, smooth and moist margins. This bacterium is gram negative, short rod-shaped, single polar flagellum, motile, without pods or endospores, and produced fluorescent pigments on King's B medium. Amplified 16S rDNA (1396 bp; OM022022) of four randomly selected colonies using universal primers 27f/1492r, exhibited 100% identity with Pseudomonas (Ps.) mosselii. The partial sequences of the rpoB (1173bp; OM202622), rpoD (734bp; ON469579), gyrB (1383bp; OM202621) and recA (887bp; ON469580) genes of four selected colonies were amplified using primers LAPS5/LAFS27(Tayeb et al. 2005.), PsEG30F/PsEG790R (Mulet et al. 2009), gyrB-R/gyrB-F (Agaras et al. 2018) and recA-F (5'-3' ACGACAACAAGAAGCGCGCCTT)/recA-R (5'-3' CAATGGCCGGGTTCTCTTGCAGGTA) designed in this study, respectively, also exhibited 99%~100% similarities to Ps. mosselii. Phylogenetic analysis showed that isolates cluster with Ps. mosselii. The biochemical tests for isolates were performed via bacterial micro-biochemical reaction tubes (Hangzhou Microbial Reagent Co., LTD), and the results showed the same biochemical characteristics as Ps. mosselii (Positive for arginine dihydrolase, trisodium citrate, urea, lysine, arginine, ornithine and gelatin. Negative for glucosamine, lactose, galactose, rhamnose, maltose, sucrose, arabinose, mannose, xylose, esculoside, inositol, nitrate reduction and malonate) (Dabboussi et al.2002; Soto-Rodriguez et al. 2013). The isolates were identified as Ps. mosselii based on biochemical tests and phylogenetic analysis. This isolate was incubated in LB Broth at 28℃, 160 rpm for 24h and the bacterial cells were collected by centrifugation at 4000 rpm for 10min. The collected bacterial cells were resuspended in sterile deionized water to make a bacterial suspension. For pathogenicity tests, 30µl of bacterial suspension (approximately 1x10^9 CFU/mL) was added to the surface of the cap (3-4cm) of young P. pulmonarius. Sterile deionized water was added as a negative control. All treatments were incubated at 22°C and 80-85% humidity. The experiment was repeated three times with three bags each time. 12 h later, white blotches were visible on all parts of the inoculated mushroom. This disease symptoms were similar to those observed in the original samples. However, no disease phenomena were observed in the negative control group. After the pathogenicity test, we obtained the same pathogen as the initially isolates from infected tissues based on morphological characteristics, 16S rDNA sequences, rpoB, rpoD, gyrB and recA sequences, and biochemical test results. Ps. mosselii was first isolated clinically and described by Dabboussi et al. (2002). It has shown to be pathogenic to Oreochromis niloticus and humans (Soto-Rodriguez et al. 2013; Peña et al. 2019; Leneveu-Jenvrin et al. 2013; Huang et al. 2018.). However, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of Ps. mosselii causing white blotch disease in P. pulmonarius worldwide, which negatively affects the commercial value of P. pulmonarius and requires attention of mushroom industry.