Isolation and Identification of Burkholderia glumae from Symptomless Rice Seeds

A survey on isolation and detection of the casual organism of bacterial grain rot of rice was conducted during 1997–2006. In 2006, six pathogenic bacterial strains were isolated from two symptomless seed samples of rice (Oryza sativa L.) originally produced in Hainan Province and then planted in Zhejiang Province, China. They were identified as Burkholderia glumae which is the causal organism of bacterial grain rot of rice by physiological characteristics, colony morphology, pathogenicity test, Biolog, fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) analysis and RAPD-PCR compared with the four standard reference strains. It is confirmed that there is the infection of B. glumae in so-called ‘health looking seeds’.