FIRST REPORT OF ZUCCHINI YELLOW MOSAIC VIRUS ON MUSKMELON IN INDIA

Abstract

Zucchini yellow mosaic virus (ZYMV, genus Potyvirus in the family Potyviridae) is the causal agent of diseases in a wide range of cucurbitaceae host species, causing important economic losses. During a 2014 survey of the main muskmelon (Cucumis melo) growing areas of Rajasthan in India, plants showing virus-like symptoms such as leaf curling, yellow vein mosaic, decreased leaf size and stunting were observed. Leaves from symptomatic plants were collected, total RNA was extracted from infected leaves using the TRIZOL (Sambrook and Russell, 2001) method and subjected to RT-PCR using potyvirus degenerate primers Pot1 and Pot2 (Colinet et al., 1997). A ca. 1.5 kb amplicon was partially sequenced and deposited in GenBank (Accession no. KJ425470) as Zucchini yellow mosaic virus isolate Rajasthan. BLASTn revealed 100% sequence identity with ZYMV-SG from China (AJ316228), 96% with ZYMV-NAT from Israel (EF062282) and 95% with ZYMV-fars from Iran (JN183062). In a phylogenetic analysis ZYMV-Rajasthan clustered with Asian ZYMV isolates. ZYMV was previously reported from cucurbitaceae species but, to our knowledge, this is the first report of ZYMV on muskmelon in India.