Abstract
Ralstonia solanacearum is a devastating soil-borne bacterial pathogen that causes disease in multiple host plants worldwide. Typical assays to measure virulence of R. solanacearum in laboratory conditions rely on soil-drenching inoculation followed by observation and scoring of disease symptoms. Here, we describe a novel inoculation protocol to analyze the replication of R. solanacearum upon infiltration into the leaves of Nicotiana benthamiana, in which gene expression has been altered using Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The protocol includes five major steps: 1) growth of N. benthamiana plants; 2) infiltration of A. tumefaciens; 3) R. solanacearum inoculation; 4) sample collection and bacterial quantitation; 5) data analysis and representation. The transient gene expression or gene silencing prior to R. solanacearum inoculation provides a straightforward way to perform genetic analysis of plant functions involved in the interaction between pathogen and host, using the appropriate combination of A. tumefaciens and R. solanacearum strains, with high sensitivity and accuracy provided by the quantitation of bacterial numbers in plant tissues.