Can the leaf age influence the susceptibility to bacterial-leaf-spot and bacterial-halo-blight on coffee seedlings?

ABSTRACT: Pseudomonas syringae van Hall, 1902, causes yield losses in innumerous economic important crops. On coffee trees, P. syringae pv. garcae causes the bacterial-halo-blight (BHB) and P. syringae pv. tabaci the bacterial-leaf-spot (BLS). Recently, these diseases incidence has increase in occurrence areas and aggressiveness in Brazil. Although leaf age plays a role in the severity response of BHB, it is not known yet if this phenomenon also occurs in coffee-BLS interaction, and with highly virulent strains. So, we examined differences in the diseases severity by inoculation of P. syringae pv. garcae and P. syringae pv. tabaci strains on coffee leaves with different ages, to compare this aspect with coffee-BLS interaction. Our results showed that, for both pathovars, the severity was greater at the first internodes leaves, although for the most aggressive strains it was quite similar on any leaf age.