Production of a Soluble Pectinase in a Simple Medium by certain Plant-Pathogenic Bacteria belonging to the Genus Pseudomonas

Abstract

IT has generally been assumed that plant-pathogenic bacteria are able to decompose pectin¹. Thaysen and Bunker², however, limit themselves to the following statement: "to the aerobic pectin decomposers belong some of the many plant-pathogenic bacteria . . . In most of their biochemical reactions they resemble the Pseudomonas fluorescens group or those Bacterium coli forms which are regularly found in grass and hay". Although many plant pathogens do in fact belong to the genus Pseudomonas³, including organisms responsible for soft rot⁴ as well as necrotic lesions, yet no detailed study of the pectin-degrading powers of these green-fluorescent bacteria seems to have been made, nor has it been shown that they resemble the soft-rot organisms of the Bacterium group (for example, B. carotovorum) in producing an exo-cellular pectinase^5,6.