Assessment of the resistance of bacterial soft rot caused by Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. carotovorum KACC 21701 in Kimchi cabbage genetic resources

Bacterial phytopathogen Pectobacterium causes soft rot disease in several vegetable crops globally, resulting in heavy agricultural losses at both the pre and postharvest stages. The present work was carried out to screen Kimchi cabbage genetic resources conserved at the National Agrobiodiversity Center, Rural Development Administration, Korea, for resistance against the soft rot pathogen Pectobacterium carotovorum subsp. carotovorum KACC 21701 over a period of three years (from 2020 to 2022). Infection of the phytopathogen was carried out at four-leaf stage and for each accession, twenty-five plants per germplasm were infected with KACC 21701. Kimchi cabbage cultivars Wangmatbaechu, Seoulbaechu, and CR Kiyoshi were used as control. Seven-days post-infection, the Disease Index (DI) values were manually recorded from zero to four, zero matched perfectly heathy plants and four completely dead plants. The 682 accessions of Kimchi cabbage exhibited varying degrees of disease resistance to KACC 21701 and thirty accessions, exhibiting a DI≤2, were considered for replication studies. During the replication studies, four landrace germplasms (IT102883, IT120036, IT120044, and IT120048) and one cultivar(IT187919) were confirmed to be moderately susceptible to KACC 21701. Results of the preliminary screening as well as replication studies were documented for the all the 682 germplasms. Addition of such information to the passport data of stored germplasms might serve as potential bio-resource for future breeders and researchers to develop resistant varieties or study the mechanisms involved in resistance of plants to such phytopathogen.