planting, seed should be checked to ensure that it is not infected with BFB. Companies such as Eurofins STA Laboratories and Summit Plant Labs test seed for cleanliness. Since the pathogen is difficult to eradicate, plant resistance to the pathogen can provide an alternative to removing the pathogen. While research is being carried out to produce cultivars that are resistant, progress has not been quick. Several accessions have been reported to have resistance to BFB in watermelon and melon, but are not widely accepted to date. While these advances are promising, there are still no commercial cultivars with significant resistance to BFB. Importance The first plant pathogenic bacteria was determined in 1878 and many more have been identified since. However, research on Bacterial Fruit Blotch began much later than many other plant diseases. It was not until the 1980s that the disease began to impact the fruit industry economically. Since the discovery of BFB, millions of dollars have been lost to crop rot, however no exact dollar amount has been identified. The first report of BFB research came in 1965 when a seed-borne phytobacterium was isolated from diseased plant tissue from Turkey. The USDA originally thought the disease was exclusively in seedlings, however the first BFB outbreak in 1987 proved that entire fields could be lost to fruit decay. Today, many outbreaks in the United States result in 90-100% fruit loss per diseased field, prompting lawsuits by farmers over contaminated seed. In the 1990s, A. citrulli was found to infect most other cucurbit species. During this time, Bacterial Fruit Blotch spread through cucurbit fields around the globe very quickly. It appears to spread only through contaminated seed, however non-economic host plants can carry the disease on seed as well, making it difficult to control. BFB is a unique disease because its late discovery gives scientists an opportunity to track the outbreak from the start. Like all plant diseases, the BFB epidemic is related to the interactions of a triangle of disease components (Pathogen, Host, and Environment). Therefore, BFB provides an opportunity to better understand how to track these interactions in real time while this disease spreads. References Bacterial plant pathogens and diseases Food plant pathogens and diseases