Mangotoxin is an antimetabolite toxin that inhibits ornithine acetyl transferase, a key enzyme in the biosynthetic pathway of ornithine and arginine and recently reported in strains of Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae (Pss) isolated from mango. Since symptoms on mango tissues are very difficult to reproduce, in this study the role of mangotoxin in Pss virulence was addressed by analyzing the in planta growth and development of disease symptoms on tomato leaflets. Inoculation experiments were carried out following several procedures using the wild-type strain Pss UMAF0158, two Tn5-mutant derivative strains defective in mangotoxin production, and their complemented derivative strains in which mangotoxin production is restored. The ability of the mangotoxin-defective mutants to grow in planta was similar, and their epiphytic survival on the tomato leaf surface identical to the wild-type and complemented strains. However, both the disease index data of incidence and the severity of necrotic symptoms indicated that mangotoxin-defective mutants were less virulent, indicating that mangotoxin is a virulence factor. Furthermore, competition experiments showed that the survival values of the wild-type strain were slightly but significantly higher than those of the mangotoxin-defective mutants, suggesting that mangotoxin production would improve the epiphytic fitness of Pss. [Int Microbiol 2009; 12(2):87-95]