Molecular and biological characterisation of an Indian variant of Chrysanthemum stunt viroid

Abstract

Chrysanthemum stunt viroid (CSVd), is known to cause severe stunting symptoms in chrysanthemum. Here, we have identified a CSVd strain that infects chrysanthemum in India and have biologically characterised it by generating in vitro RNA transcripts from the cloned viroid genome. Transcripts inoculated on chrysanthemum caused severe stunting (characteristic of the viroid) and mottling in chrysanthemum and stunting symptoms in cucumber var. Summer green is also reported. Sequence changes in the Terminal Conserved region (TCR) corroborated with change in RNA secondary structure might have implications associated with the viroid pathogenicity. This is the first report of CSVd causing symptoms on cucumber plants.