First Report of Tomato yellow leaf curl virus Co-infecting Pepper with Tomato chino La Paz virus in Baja California Sur, Mexico

Abstract

Chile peppers are among the most common and important crops in the State of Baja California Sur, Mexico, where diverse varieties of this crop are annually cultivated. The “chile ancho” (Capsicum annuum L. var. ancho poblano) is one of the most popular hot peppers that is exported fresh to the United States. During a survey in December of 2007 in an experimental field of the CIBNOR in El Carrizal, one of the principal farm districts in the state, a high incidence of yellowing, stunted growth with shortened internodes, foliage discoloration, malformation and crinkle, abortion of flowers, and reduction in size and quantity of fruit were noted in chile ancho. Symptoms and the presence of large populations of whiteflies in the field suggested a possible viral etiology of disease. The symptoms of disease were successfully transmitted by grafting from field plants to tomato and pepper test plants. Samples from both field and test plants were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and molecular techniques. SEM study revealed groups of geminate particles characteristic of begomoviruses (Geminiviridae) in phloem tissue of randomly selected symptomatic plants (four field and two test plants). Total DNA from 12 symptomatic plants (eight naturally infected and four test plants) was obtained by a modified Dellaporta method and analyzed by PCR using the begomovirus universal primers prRepDGR (2) and prC889 (3). Amplicons of ~1.4 kb were obtained from all plant samples and PCR products from four of them were cloned into pGEM-T Easy vector (Promega, Madison, WI) and subsequently analyzed by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) using EcoRI and HinfI. Two distinct restriction fragment patterns were observed among the cloned PCR products, indicating the occurrence of at least two viruses in the infected plant tissues. The four examined samples contained the same two begomoviruses according to the RFLP analysis data. The complete sequence of the genomic component A of those viruses was determined by PCR amplification of viral DNA with universal, degenerate primers previously described (2), the subsequent cloning of overlapped PCR products, and sequencing. The full-length DNA-A sequence was assembled and compared with viral sequences available at the GenBank database using BlastN and the ClustalV alignment method (MegAlign; DNASTAR, Madison, WI). The 2,781-bp complete genome sequence of one co-infecting monopartite begomovirus (Accession No. HM459851) displayed the highest identity (99%) with Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), isolate Guasave, Sinaloa (Accession No. FJ609655). The 2,609-bp DNA-A sequence of the second begomovirus exhibited the highest nucleotide identity (96%) with Tomato chino La Paz virus (ToChLPV)-[Baja California Sur] (Accession No. AY339619). The presence of TYLCV in this region of Mexico had not been previously reported nor was ToChLPV detected in pepper until now. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a mixed infection of pepper plants with TYLCV and a bipartite begomovirus in Baja California Peninsula. Since the high frequency of recombination events observed in begomovirus mixed infections involving TYLCV (1), it would be important to monitor the possible emergence of ToChLPV-TYLCV recombinants with higher potential virulence. References: (1) S. García-Andrés et al. Virology 365:210, 2007. (2) A. Mauricio-Castillo et al. Plant Dis. 91:1513, 2007. (3) S. D. Wyatt and J. K. Brown. Phytopathology 86:1288, 1996.

High-Throughput Sequencing Reveals Differential Begomovirus Species Diversity in Non-Cultivated Plants in Northern-Pacific Mexico

“…TYLCV is the major viral concern for tomato production worldwide [78]. It was recently identified as a seed-transmitted virus [86] and is associated with crop diseases with other begomoviruses in both the Old and New World [87,88,89,90,91,92,93,94]. It has also been reported in many non-cultivated plant species worldwide including the families Amaranthaceae, Asteraceae, Chenopodiaceae, Convolvulaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Fabaceae, Malvaceae , and Solanaceae [95,96,97,98,99].…”

ANÁLISIS FILOGENÉTICO Y DISTRIBUCIÓN DE BEGOMOVIRUS EN EL CULTIVO DEL CHILE (Capsicum annuum L.) EN SINALOA, MÉXICO

“…El virus TYLCV es común en infecciones virales de tomate; sin embargo, sólo se identificó en el 5.8 % de un total de 121 muestras analizadas en diferentes genotipos del cultivo de chile como el Serrano, Jalapeño, Morrón y Ancho (Poblano) en los municipios del Rosario, Culiacán y Ahome, lo cual indica un amplio rango de hospedantes, aunque la incidencia de este Begomovirus fue baja comparada con el PHYVV (74.4 %) y PepGMV (53.7 %), en estos momentos se le considera con riesgo potencial para el cultivo de chile en el estado de Sinaloa, lo que no coincide con lo descrito por otros autores, que han reportado a C. annuum como un hospedante alterno de Tomato yellow leaf curl (Cárdenas-Conejo et al, 2010;Morilla et al, 2005;Orduño-Vega, 2009 Com. Pers.…”

Mixed infections of Tomato yellow leaf curl New Delhi virus and a ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris’ strain in zucchini squash in Italy

“…Mixed infections of phytoplasmas and begomoviruses have been reported in different vegetable crops from other countries. These reports include: in tomato and pepper in Mexico (Cardenas-Conejo et al, 2010;Lebsky et al, 2011); in chickpea, eggplant, tomato, pepper and Withania somnifera in India (Swarnalatha and Reddy, 2014;Singh et al, 2015;Venkataravanappa et al, 2018;Reddy et al, 2021;Tiwari et al, 2022); in common bean in Cuba (Zamora et al, 2021); in tomato in Saudi Arabia (Sohrab et al, 2016); and in many ornamental crops (Ahmad and Khan, 2021). The present study results represent the first evidences of mixed infections of the whitefly-transmitted Begomovirus ToLCNDV and a 16SrI-B group related phytoplasma in diseased zucchini squash, and in Italy.…”