Beschreibung:
Gremmeniella abietina, the causative agent of Scleroderris canker in conifers, has been separated into three races: European, North American and Asian. Recent studies have suggested that the European race in Fennoscandinavia may be divided into two types. We show that these types cannot be identified with their protein patterns obtained under denaturing conditions, but the two types can be separated based upon presence or absence of a 26-28 kD immunoreactive double band in western blotting. Polyclonal antibodies, either crude or purified with preparative western blotting, detected this double band in all tested 25 isolates classified as type B or short tree type but not in any of 27 isolates of type A or large tree type. This immunoassay was used to type 10 unclassified isolates. The results indicated that short tree type of the Swedish classification is immunologically identical to the Finnish type B and large tree type is identical to the type A. Thus, in Fennoscandinavia the European race can be divided into two serovars as previously suggested by random amplified polymorphic DNA markers.