Abstract
Curtoviruses, members of the Geminiviridae, have wide host ranges, including weeds and crops and are often found in mixed infections of different strains. While other members of the Geminiviridae have been demonstrated to interact through competition and synergism in mixed infections in plants, either type of interaction has not been reported in curtoviruses. This research used qPCR to study the interactions between Beet curly top virus, pepper curly top strain, isolate BV3 (BCTV-PeCT-BV3) and Beet curly top virus, beet severe curly top strain (BCTV-Svr) in three plant hosts. A significant decrease in virus titer in both BCTV-PeCTV and BCTV-Svr in co-infected sugar beets was observed when compared to beets infected with either virus, indicating competition. Chile pepper showed a significant increase in BCTV-PeCT titer in co-infected plants, compared to singly infected plants, indicating synergism. BCTV-PeCT caused severe symptoms and yielded high virus titer in chile, compared to the lack of symptoms and extremely low titer of BCTV-Svr in that plant host. These results indicate that curtovirus symptoms and infection can be host specific and such host may influence mixed infections of virus. Curtoviruses can interact through both competition and synergism and the response may be dependent on the type of host plant. Key words: Beet curly top virus, interspecific competition, host specificity, mixed infections
Highlights
Top disease is caused by members of the genus Curtovirus, within the family Geminiviridae (Bennett, 1971; Soto et al, 2005; Varsani et al, 2014)
While other members of the Geminiviridae have been demonstrated to interact through competition and synergism in mixed infections in plants, either type of interaction has not been reported in curtoviruses
BCTV-PeCT caused severe symptoms and yielded high virus titer in chile, compared to the lack of symptoms and extremely low titer of BCTV-Svr in that plant host. These results indicate that curtovirus symptoms and infection can be host specific and such host may influence mixed infections of virus
Summary
Top disease is caused by members of the genus Curtovirus, within the family Geminiviridae (Bennett, 1971; Soto et al, 2005; Varsani et al, 2014). Curtovirus host range is broad and includes crops as chile pepper [Capsicum annuum (L.)], tomato [Solanum. In the field, infected weeds are usually asymptomatic while crops develop severe symptoms (Lam et al, 2009). Symptoms of curtovirusinfected chile pepper plants are stunting, chlorosis, thickened curled leaves, hyperplastic phloem growth, and reduced fruit set (Creamer et al, 2003), while curtovirus symptoms on sugar beets include stunting, chlorosis, severe leaf curling, and production of punctate growths on leaf veins (Bennett, 1971). Co-infections with two or more viruses at the same time are commonly found in field samples (Roossinck, 2005) and can be beneficial to at least one of the viruses or antagonistic, where the co-infection is deleterious to one of the viruses. Since virus replication is an immediate indicator of competition for resources, changes in virus titer has been used to experimentally demonstrate competition between viruses (Roossinck, 2005; Hall and Little, 2013; Salvaudon et al, 2013)
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