Abstract
Bacterial wilt caused by Ralstonia solanacearum has become a severe problem on tobacco in Korea. No effective single control measure is available at present time. One of the most potential way for controlling the bacterial wilt on tobacco is growing tobacco cultivars resistant to the bacterial wilt. In this study, optimal conditions for screening tobacco cultivars resistant to the bacterial wilt were examined to provide reproducible and efficient methods in growth chamber testing and field experiments for evaluating plant disease resistance. For this, already-known inoculation methods, inoculum densities, and incubation temperature, and plant growth stages at the time of inoculation were compared using tobacco cultivars resistant (Nicotiana tabacum cv, NC95), moderately resistant (N. tabacum cv. SPG70), and susceptible (N. tabacum BY4) to the bacterial disease. It was determined that root-dipping of tobacco seedlings at six true leaf stage into the bacterial suspension with inoculum level of $10^8$ colony-forming units (CFU)/ml for 20 min before transplanting was simple and most efficient in testing for resistance to the bacterial wilt of tobacco caused by R. solanacearum, for which disease incidences and severities were examined at 2 weeks of plant growth after inoculation at $20{\sim}25^{\circ}C$ in a growth chamber. These experimental conditions could discriminate one tobacco cultivar from the others by disease severity better than any other experimental conditions. In field testing, the optimum time for examining the disease occurrence was late June through early July. These results can be applied to establishing a technical manual for the screening of resistant tobacco cultivars against the bacterial wilt caused by R. solanacearum.