taxonomic status

The bacterial disease of the native New Zealand plant Dysoxylum spectabile (Kohekohe) with the symptoms of greasy translucent leaf lesions, 'shotholes' in the leaf tissue, and greasy lesions in the leaf axils is caused by Xanthomonas dyei pv. dysoxyli. This was originally described as Pseudomonas dysoxyli by Hutchinson (1949) probably because these strains do not produce the yellow pigment xanthomonadin, which was understood to be characteristic of all xanthomonads at the time. When the when the nomenclature of plant pathogenic bacteria was revised (Young et al. 1978), The Pseudomonas strain ICMP 545 seemed most likely to represent the pathogen and was designated as the pathotype strain of P. syringae pv. dysoxyli. However this strain was subsequently found to be non-pathogenic, other Xanthomonas strains from Dysoxylum spectabile did cause disease and matched Hutchinson’s original description. Thus P. syringae pv. dysoxyli was recombined into Xanthomonas dyei pv. dysoxyli with a neopathotype strain of ICMP 2415 (Young et al. 2010) Any Pseudomonas isolates that are similar to ICMP 545 may be considered non-pathogenic (at least on Dysoxylum) environmental P. syringe strains with no pathovar designation.

Young, J.M.; Wilkie, J.P.; Park, D.-C.; Watson, D.R.W. 2010: New Zealand strains of plant pathogenic bacteria classified by multi-locus sequence analysis: proposal of Xanthomonas dyei sp. nov. Plant Pathology 59(2): 270-281.