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Molecular fingerprinting techniques that have the potential to identify or subtype bacteria at the strain level are needed for improving diagnosis and understanding of the epidemiology of pathogens such as Xanthomonas citri pv. mangiferaeindicae, which causes mango bacterial canker disease. We developed a ligation-mediated polymerase chain reaction targeting the IS1595 insertion sequence as a means to differentiate pv. mangiferaeindicae from the closely related pv. anacardii (responsible for cashew bacterial spot), which has the potential to infect mango but not to cause significant disease. This technique produced weakly polymorphic fingerprints composed of ≈70 amplified fragments per strain for a worldwide collection of X. citri pv. mangiferaeindicae but produced no or very weak amplification for pv. anacardii strains. Together, 12 tandem repeat markers were able to subtype X. citri pv. mangiferaeindicae at the strain level, distinguishing 231 haplotypes from a worldwide collection of 299 strains. Multilocus variable number of tandem repeats analysis (MLVA), IS1595-ligation-mediated polymerase chain reaction, and amplified fragment length polymorphism showed differences in discriminatory power and were congruent in describing the diversity of this strain collection, suggesting low levels of recombination. The potential of the MLVA scheme for molecular epidemiology studies of X. citri pv. mangiferaeindicae is discussed.

Two DNA fragments from Xanthomonas albilineans were used as probes to study the molecular diversity among strains of this pathogen. Two serologically distinct groups, serovars I and II, could be differentiated by hybridization to the probes. These probes, designated 830 and 838, were cloned after subtractive DNA hybridization of common sequences of Xanthomonas campestris pv. vasculorum from a serovar I strain of X. albilineans. They did not hybridize to the DNA of several other xanthomonads or to sugarcane DNA under the conditions of hybridization used. Faint bands were observed upon hybridization of probe 830 with one strain of X. campestris pv. phaseoli. The same banding patterns were obtained with a strain of X. albilineans from Burkina Faso and the serovar II strains of Mauritius. The serovar I strains from Mauritius and two other strains each from Reunion and South Africa had similar pattern.