Chapter 13 - Diversity of begomoviruses associated with gourds

Abstract

Gourds are important vegetable crops grown throughout the world that have having nutritional and medicinal properties. The cultivation of the gourds is hampered by several biotic and abiotic stresses. Of the different biotic stresses, the diseases caused by begomoviruses on gourds have led to huge losses to the growers. The assessment of the genetic diversity of begomoviruses is one of the important key factors for designing the management strategies. There are nine different species of begomoviruses infecting gourd crops: Ageratum enation virus, Bitter gourd yellow mosaic virus, Coccinia mosaic Virudhunagar virus, Cotton leaf curl Burewala virus, Luffa yellow mosaic virus, Squash leaf curl China virus, Squash leaf curl Philippines virus, Tomato yellow leaf curl virus, and Tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus based on the DNA-A genome sequence. The majority of the reported begomoviruses on gourds are bipartite, having a DNA-B component and a few of them are monopartite begomoviruses, which are known to be associated with DNA satellites reported from different parts of the world. The break point analysis indicates that DNA-A and DNA-B components of different begomoviruses infecting gourds have both intra and interspecies recombination.