American Foulbrood (AFB) is a devastating disease of honey bee (Apis meilifera) larvae caused by the spore-forming, Gram-positive bacterium Paenibacillus larvae. In most countries, the law requires mandatory reporting of AFB to the veterinary authority. To speed up detection and genotyping of P. larvae spores, we compared different culturing protocols on Columbia sheep blood agar (CSA) and developed a new multiplex qPCR to distinguish between the two relevant P. larvae genotypes ERIC I and ERIC II. As confirmed by P. larvae reference strains and field isolates, the new identification and genotyping protocol halves the time of current workflows, lessens labour-intension, allows a higher throughput of samples for monitoring, and permits a faster intervention to prevent the spread of AFB.
Key words: American Foulbrood, Paenibacillus larvae, rapid detection, multiplex quantitative PCR, ERIC genotyping
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