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Bacterial streaming test for bacterial wilt of edible ginger. Note the whitish strands of bacterial masses streaming out of the severed ginger rhizome into the beaker of water.

Bacterial streaming from the stem of a bell pepper plant into a glass of tap water.  The disease is bacterial wilt, caused by the plant-pathogenic bacterium, Ralstonia solanacearum.

Definition

Bacterial streaming is a phenomenon describing the movement or exit of bacterial populations out of plant tissues after the tissues are severed in water.

Discussion

Bacterial streaming is a field test or diagnostic laboratory test used in the diagnosis of bacterial wilt, blight or leafspot diseases.

How to test for bacterial streaming:

1) Examining leaf sections with light microscopy. Make sections of leaf tisses from the water-soaked margins of lesions.  Place on a slide in a drop of water, cover with a cover glass, and examine at 100-200X of masses of bacterial cells that stream outr of affected leaf vines and ttissues. 

2) Examining plant stems or rhizomes with the unaided eye.  Sever a stem or rhizome and suspend it in a glass of water and wait for the masses of whitich bacterial colonized to stream from teh veins and tissues at the cut end of the stem or rhisome.