Committee on the Taxonomy of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria

Minutes of the meeting of the ISPP Committee on Taxonomy of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria held in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK on 13 July 2006.

The Committee met at the 11th International Conference on Plant Pathogenic Bacteria, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK, 10-14 July 2006.  Drs C. Bull (present by conference call), S. De Boer, M. Fischer-Le Saux, G. Saddler, M. Scortichini, D. Stead, Y. Takikawa and J. Young, as members of the Committee, and 22 members of the conference attended.

1. Meeting convened: 17:30h; Chair Dr J. Young

2. Apologies: Received from Drs. G. Firrao, and T. Denny.

3. Committee Report: The Committee had not formally convened since the meeting in Charlottetown, PEI, Canada in 2000, but an informal meeting was held at the ISPP meeting in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2002.  Minutes of the last meeting at Charlottetown taken as read. The following actions initiated at the previous meeting were discussed:

·          At the request of the Committee a website was created by the ISPP Secretariat within the ISPP website in 2001. Various documents including the minutes of the Committee meeting at the previous NCPPB Conference, the International Standards for Naming Pathovars, the List of Names of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria 1864-1996, and annual updates of names after 2000 have been posted. An ongoing problem has been to update and correct the website through the ISPP Secretariat. Recently, the website was placed under the direct control of Committee.

·          The List of Names was up-dated in 2004 and was recently posted.

·          A discussion forum was initiated but it is largely inactive, perhaps because of a lack of awareness of the site.

·          We wrote a Letter to Phytopathology in explanation of misunderstandings about the Bacteriological Code and the International Standards for Naming Pathovars.

                        Young, J.M., Bull, C.T., De Boer, S.H., Firrao, G., Gardan, l., Saddler, G.E., Stead, D.E., Takikawa, Y. 2001. Classification, nomenclature and plant pathogenic bacteria – a clarification. Phytopathology 91:617–620. DOI:10.1094/PHYTO.2001.91.7.617

·          A letter was sent to the USDA/ARS Dr. R. Gingery re: US Culture Collection of Plant Pathogenic Bacteria supporting the establishment of culture collections in the United States dedicated to plant pathogenic bacteria.  J.B. Jones is heading an ad-hoc committee for the American Phytopathological Society to look for a long-term solution to the lack of resources for permanent microbial culture collections in the US.

Additional work of the Committee over the last 6 years.

·          The Committee is reactive, keeping an up to-date list of names, and standards, commenting when names are proposed that do not meet the Standards.  The Committee has commented twice in situations when proposals were viewed as unhelpful to the wider community of plant pathogens.

·          An intention to contact journal editors to ensure that they are aware of the Committee as a possible source of manuscript reviewers for nomenclatural proposals was not pursued because of uncertainties over the question of which journals should be approached.

·          The Committee has worked on the question of ‘Terms of Reference’ for the committee. Although not a requirement for ISPP Subject Matter Committees, it has been felt that some guiding framework should be  developed. The Committee is working on proposals for rotation of Committee membership that encourage a high level expertise.  One suggestion was for those interested and with the expertise to send their names and contact information for consideration and nomination by the Committee.  Guiseppe Firrao previously developed a survey of the Committee to help determine what expertise is needed.  Those interested could be sent this form to fill out.

·          Our goal for the List of Names is to have the Website up-date the list as citations proposing the names are sent. Authors are encouraged to send publications of new pathogens to the Committee to ensure they are not missed. Need means of contacting the Committee so we need to publicise our contact details.  Carolee would like to have a webform that they could use to send the information.

·           Nomenclatural issues: When they were first chosen, pathotype strains were originally selected from historical data. Since then some have been identified as not representative of the pathogen.  The Committee proposed the following corrections to pathotype strains:

Pseudomonas syringae pv. lachrymans

Present: ATCC 7386; CFBP 2104*; ICMP 3988*; LMG 5070; NCPPB 537

New: ICMP 3507; NCPPB 1436

Xanthomonas axonopodis pv. allii (Kadota, Uehara, Shinohara & Nishiyama 2000) Roumagnac, Gagnevin, Gardan, Sutra, Manceau, Dickstein, Jones, Rott & Pruvost 2004

                  = Xanthomonas campestris pv. allii Kadota, Uehara, Shinohara & Nishiyama 2000