Development of Genome-Driven, Lifestyle-Informed Markers for Identification of the Cereal-Infecting Pathogens Pathovars and .

Bacterial leaf streak, bacterial blight, and black chaff caused by pathovars are major diseases affecting small grains. pv. and pv. are seedborne pathogens that cause similar symptoms on barley, but only pv. causes bacterial leaf streak of wheat. Recent outbreaks of have been a concern for wheat and barley growers in the Northern Great Plains; however, there are limited diagnostic tools for pathovar differentiation. We developed a multiplex PCR based on whole-genome differences to distinguish pv. and pv. . We validated the primers across different and non- strains. To our knowledge, this is the first multiplex PCR to distinguish pv. and pv. . These molecular tools will support disease management strategies enabling detection and pathovar incidence analysis of . [Formula: see text] Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.