Barsha Poudel

1 Introduction Bacterial diseases of plants are a persistent and evolving threat to crop production (Sharma et al. 2022). Disease management strategies rely on tactics to reduce pathogen populations in the environment and genetic improvement programmes to breed less susceptible crop varieties. The effectiveness of these strategies requires comprehensive knowledge of the factors affecting bacterial pathogenicity and their interactions with the host and environment.

Abstract In bacteria, plasmids can confer the ability to cause disease. Although they can potentially vary in copy number, little has been reported on the dynamics of plasmids in plant pathogenic bacteria. Pathogenicity of the bacterium Curtobacterium flaccumfaciens pv. flaccumfaciens (Cff), which causes foliar disease on leguminous crops, including mung bean (Vigna radiata), has previously been linked to a plasmid.