Zaczek-Moczydlowska, Maja A.Fleming, Colin CraigYoung, Gillian K.Campbell, KatrinaO'Hanlon, Richard2020-07-102020-07-102019-02-07Zaczek-Moczydłowska, M. A., Fleming, C. C., Young, G. K., Campbell, K. and O’Hanlon, R. (2019) ‘Pectobacterium and Dickeya species detected in vegetables in Northern Ireland’, European Journal of Plant Pathology. Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration Inc., 154(3), pp. 635–647. doi: 10.1007/s10658-019-01687-1.1573-8469https://doi.org/10.1007/s10658-019-01687-1Publication history: Accepted - 22 January 2019; Published online - 7 February 2019.Destructive soft rot Pectobacteriaceae affect a number of vegetable crops and cause high economic loses in the field and storage. The diversity of Pectobacterium and Dickeya causing soft rot of vegetables in Northern Ireland is unknown. This study provides details of Pectobacterium and Dickeya spp. detected in vegetables from several locations in Northern Ireland in the years 2015–2017. Soft rot Pectobacteriaceae were identified based on DNA sequences. Thirty one strains were selected for further phylogenetic analysis based on the recA gene region. Results from the testing of over 3456 potato samples for plant health statutory purposes in years 2005–2017 demonstrated that Dickeya spp. is not the major pathogen causing soft rot or blackleg in Northern Ireland. The most predominant species causing soft rot of vegetables in Northern Ireland were Pectobacterium atrosepticum and Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. carotovorum. Pectobacterium atrosepticum was also detected on hosts other than potato. Testing of bacteria isolated from carrots led to the detection of P. carotovorum and Dickeya sp. This is the first study to provide knowledge about Pectobacterium and Dickeya spp. diversity causing soft rot of vegetables in Northern Ireland confirmed by real-time PCR and DNA sequences. This is also the first report of the detection of D. aquatica from a source other than water.enThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Pectobacterium, Dickeya, Soft rot Enterobacteriaceae, PCR detection, recA sequencingArticle