Cowpea mild mottle, a newly recognized virus infecting cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata) in Ghana.

Abstract

SUMMARYCowpea mild mottle virus (CMMV), a previously undescribed virus widespread in cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata) in the Eastern Region of Ghana, was seed‐borne in V. unguiculata, Phaseolus vulgaris and Glycine max, but was not transmitted by twelve aphid species including Aphis craccivora, A. fabae, Acyrthosiphon pisum and Myzus persicae. CMMV was transmitted by inoculation of sap to eleven of seventeen members of the Papilionaceae causing very severe diseases in G. max and Arachis hypogaea, and to ten of fifty‐one species within five of nineteen other families; it was best propagated in G. max and Nicotiana clevelandii, and assayed in Chenopodium quinoa. Sap from systemically infected G. max was infective after dilution to 10‐3 but not 10‐4, after 10 min at 65 °C but not at 70 °C, or after 4 days at 18 °C or 16 days at 2 °C. Lyophilized sap was infective after 3 years in vacuo.CMMV has straight to slightly flexuous, fragile filamentous particles, c. 13 × 650 nm which, in sap, are occasionally surrounded by a loose external spiral. About 5 mg of purified virus was obtained from 1 kg of leaf tissue of G. max or N. clevelandii by clarifying leaf extracts in 0.02 m borate buffer (pH 9.5) with chloroform, followed by two or three cycles of differential centrifugation, and density gradient centrifugation. Virus preparations had ultraviolet absorption spectra typical of a nucleoprotein containing c. 5 % nucleic acid, contained numerous particles without external spirals, which sedimented as a single component with a sedimentation coefficient (s°20, w) of 165 × 4S, and contained a single polypeptide species with a molecular weight of 32000–33000. CMMV showed a distant serological relationship to carnation latent virus, but not to ten other morphologically similar viruses; it thus seems to be a distinct member of the carlavirus group, and has the cryptogram: */*:*/(5):E/E:S/*.