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Two Abelmoschus species, viz., A. manihot (L.) Medik and A. manihot (L.) Medik ssp. manihot, resistant to Okra yellow vein mosaic (YVM) were crossed to A. esculentus cv. 'Pusa Sawani', a susceptible culture. The hybrids were resistant and partially fertile. Segregation pattern for disease reaction in F2, BC1 and subsequent generations of the two crosses revealed that resistance to YVM is controlled by a single dominant gene in each species.

Five genotypes of Viciafuba L. with contrasting stomata1 frequencies were grown in a controlled environment in soil moisture regimes of 100x, 78% and 61% of field capacity. Growth, water use and leaf conductance characteristics were measured. Stomata were more frequent on abaxial than adaxial surfaces, the abaxial/adaxial ratio ranging from 1.12 to 1.34. There were significant (P < 0.001) correlations between calculated stomata1 conductance, based on measurements of stomata1 frequency and length, and leaf conductance measured with a diffusion porometer, in the two higher soil moisture treatments. In the 100 % regime only, abaxial stomata opened wider than adaxial. Ranking of the genotypes for leaf conductance and plant transpiration was similar in all three regimes with large leaved types having the lowest conductance and greatest water use efficiency. Growing plants with reduced soil moisture availability improved water use efficiency, the ranking for which was also similar in all treatments. Relative growth rate and net assimilation rate were greatest with full watering, less in the 78% and least in the 61% regime. Leaf area ratio was less affected by available soil moisture and only in some genotypes.

A total of 240 sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) plants showing phenotypic symptoms of sugarcane grassy shoot (SCGS) disease were collected from three states of India, Maharashtra, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh. Phytoplasmas were detected in all symptomatic samples by the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of phytoplasma-specific 16S rRNA gene and 16S-23S rRNA spacer region (SR) sequences. No amplification was observed when DNA from asymptomatic plant samples was used as a template. Sixteen samples were selected on the basis of phenotypic symptoms and geographic location, and cloning and sequencing of the 16S rRNA and spacer regions were performed. Multiple sequence alignments of the 16S rRNA sequences revealed that they share very high sequence similarity with phytoplasmas of rice yellow dwarf, 16SrXI. However, the 16S-23S rRNA SR sequence analysis revealed that while the majority of phytoplasmas shared very high (>99%) sequence similarity with previously reported sugarcane phytoplasmas, two of them, namely BV2 (DQ380342) and VD7 (DQ380343), shared relatively low sequence similarity (79 and 84%, respectively). Therefore, these two phytoplasmas may be previously unreported ones that cause significant yield losses in sugarcane in India.

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