Bacterial Wilt in China: History, Current Status, and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Bacterial wilt caused by plant pathogenic Ralstonia spp. is one of the most important diseases affecting the production of many important crops worldwide. In China, a large scientific community has been dedicated to studying bacterial wilt and its causative agent, Ralstonia pseudosolanacearum and R. solanacearum. Most of their work was published in Chinese, which has hindered international communication and collaboration in this field. In this review, we summarize the status of knowledge on geographical distribution, diversity, and host range of Ralstonia spp., as well as, the impact of bacterial wilt on important crops and disease control approaches, in China. We present areas of research and publications by Chinese scientists and propose the promotion of collaborative research within China and with the international community.

Keywords: China; bacterial wilt; distribution; diversity; host range.

FIGURE 1

Geographical distribution of bacterial wilt in China. Records of each province were extracted from both CNKI and WoS, as well as information from website reports. Color depth indicates the number of records in each province.

FIGURE 2

Host plants of the pathogenic Ralstonia spp. in China. A total of 84 plant species present here based on discovered decade since the first record on peanut in 1930s. Some of them are composed by more than one closed species like Casuarina spp., Eucalyptus spp. The common names in italic and bold indicate the host plants of Ralstonia spp. reported only in China. There is no ranked discovered time in this figure. Detail information of host plant and discovered year in Supplementary File 1.

FIGURE 3

Publication records of the pathogenic Ralstonia spp. and bacterial wilt. Blue line indicates number of publications written in Chinese, i.e., records from CNKI. Red and black line show the records from Chinese organizations and world community on WoS. Small panel in Figure 3 shows the Top 10 numbers of reports on Ralstonia spp. from WoS published by researchers from United States (US), China (CN), France (FR), Japan (JP), India (IN), Germany (DE), Brazil (BR), United Kingdom (UK), the Netherlands (NL), and Korea (KR).