A pathovar is a

bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were am ...

l strain or set of strains with the same or similar characteristics, that is differentiated at infrasubspecific level from other strains of the same species or subspecies on the basis of distinctive pathogenicity to one or more

plant Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae excl ...

hosts. Pathovars are named as a ternary or quaternary addition to the species binomial name, for example the bacterium that causes

citrus canker Citrus canker is a disease affecting ''Citrus'' species caused by the bacterium '' Xanthomonas'' (''X.axonopodis; X. campestris''). Infection causes lesions on the leaves, stems, and fruit of citrus trees, including lime, oranges, and grapefrui ...

''Xanthomonas axonopodis'', has several pathovars with different host ranges, ''X. axonopodis'' pv. ''citri'' is one of them; the abbreviation 'pv.' means pathovar. The type strains of pathovars are pathotypes, which are distinguished from the types (

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of seve ...

, neotype, etc.) of the species to which the pathovar belongs.

References

Biological classification Bacterial plant pathogens and diseases Microbiology Pathovars {{plant-disease-stub

See also

References