At the beginning of July 2020, three-month-old carrot plants (Daucus carota L. variety Maestro F1) grown in a commercial field 1.2 ha in size at the Begeč locality (45°14’30.38” N 19°36’44.82” E) i...

Peppermint (Mentha x piperita L.) is an herbaceous perennial widely cultivated in Serbia. Known for its medicinal and aromatic properties, its leaves are used for tea and essential oil production. Peppermint is mainly propagated by rhizome cuttings in Serbia. Veinal reddening on the lower leaf surface and stunted growth were first recorded at the beginning of July 2014, in the second year of cultivation at the Bački Petrovac locality (45º21′38″N 19º35′30″E) (Vojvodina province, Serbia). These symptoms suggested a phytoplasma-associated infection so plants were regularly monitored for disease progression. Late in August 2014, a severe leaf reddening followed by reduction in growth strengthened our supposition. At the end of August 2014, total nucleic acid was extracted from the vascular tissue of 15 symptomatic and 15 asymptomatic leaves using the cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) method. Initial phytoplasma detection was conducted on the 16S rRNA gene using a nested PCR assay with phytoplasma universa...

The aim of this study was to establish a link between genetic diversity and the geographic origin of Pectobacterium strains belonging to three species—P. carotovorum, P. versatile, and P. odoriferum—isolated from cabbage in Serbia by comparing their sequences with those of strains sourced from different hosts and countries in Europe, Asia, and North America. Phylogeographic relatedness was reconstructed using the Templeton, Crandall, and Sing’s (TCS) haplotype network based on concatenated sequences of the housekeeping genes dnaX, icdA, mdh, and proA, while pairwise genetic distances were computed by applying the p-distance model. The obtained TCS haplotype networks indicated the existence of high intra-species genetic diversity among strains of all three species, as reflected in the 0.2–2.3%, 0.2–2.5%, and 0.1–1.7% genetic distance ranges obtained for P. carotovorum, P. versatile, and P. odoriferum, respectively. Five new haplotypes (denoted as HPc1–HPc5) were detected among cabbage strains of P. carotovorum, while one new haplotype was identified for both P. versatile (HPv1) and P. odoriferum (HPo1). None of the TCS haplotype networks provided evidence of significant correlation between geographic origin and the determined haplotypes, i.e., the infection origin. However, as haplotype network results are affected by the availability of sequencing data in public databases for the used genes and the number of analyzed strains, these findings may also be influenced by small sample size.