Summary
A novel candidate species of the liberibacter genus, ‘
Candidatus
Liberibacter brunswickensis’ (
CL
br), was identified in the Australian eggplant psyllid,
Acizzia solanicola
. This is the first discovery of a species belonging to the liberibacter genus in Australia and the first report of a liberibacter species in the psyllid genus
Acizzia
. This new candidate liberibacter species has not been associated with plant disease, unlike other psyllid‐vectored species in the genus including ‘
Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus
’ (
CL
as), ‘
Candidatus
Liberibacter africanus’ (
CL
af) and ‘
Ca
. Liberibacter solanacearum’ (
CL
so). This study describes novel generic liberibacter genus primers, used to screen Australian psyllids for the presence of microflora that may confound diagnosis of exotic pathogens.
CL
br forms a unique clade in the liberibacter genus based on phylogenetic analysis of the 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid (
rRNA
) region and multilocus sequence analysis (
MLSA
) of seven highly conserved genes,
dnaG
,
gyrB
,
mutS
,
nusG
,
rplA
,
rpoB
and
tufB
. The
MLSA
mapping approach described in this article was able to discriminate between two ‘
Ca
. Liberibacter’ species within a metagenomic data set and represents a novel approach to detecting and differentiating unculturable species of liberibacter. Further,
CL
br can confound the Li
et al
. (2006) quantitative
PCR
(
qPCR
) diagnostic tests for
CL
as and
CL
af.