A three-year study of fireblight in Lithuania

Lithuania has a protected zone status in respect of a quarantine bacterium Erwinia amylovora that causes devastating infections of fireblight. Seeking to detect, identify and determine the distribution of bacterium, monitoring of fireblight was performed in Lithuania. For the first time fireblight was observed on hawthorn with symptoms during surveys in 2005. During the next two years despite quarantine measures fireblight was established in eight regions of the country. 183 symptomatic and 9 symptomless fireblight infections were detected using different diagnostic methods - immunofluorescence (IF), plating, bioassay, nutritional and enzymatic tests and nested polymerase chain reaction (PCR).