First report of Chilli leaf curl virus associated with leaf curl disease of potato in India

Abstract

Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is an important food crop worldwide. In India, potato is cultivated in an area of about 1.34 million hectares with a total production of about 24.7 million tons. In February 2014, potato plants with a bushy and stunted growth as well as foliar curl and bright yellowing were observed at Matera, District Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh. The incidence of the disease was high (mean of 56%) in different fields. Detection of begomoviruses by PCR using generic begomovirus coat protein gene primers (Khan et al., 2014) resulted in a 770 bp amplicon in 11 symptomatic plant samples. No amplicon was obtained from asymptomatic plant samples. Amplicons from the 11 symptomatic plants were cloned in a TA plasmid (Takara Mighty TA cloning kit, Japan). Two clones per amplicon were sequenced in both orientations, resulting in a consensus sequence, which was submitted to GenBank as accession number KJ590964. BLASTn analysis of the nucleotide sequence revealed 99% identity with Chilli leaf curl virus (ChLCV) isolates originating from different plant species (JF682241, JN663846, HM007104, EU939533, HM007114, JN896946). Phylogenic analyses using MEGA version 5.0 showed the virus isolate from potato clustering in a separate clade with other ChLCV isolates and having distant relationships with other members of the genus Begomovirus in the family Geminiviridae. Tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus was previously reported in potato affected by leaf curl disease (Usharani et al., 2004; Khan et al., 2014). To the best of our knowledge, this is a first report of ChLCV associated with leaf curl and bright yellowing of potato in India.