MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF GARLIC VIRUS D ASSOCIATED WITH GARLIC IN INDIA

Abstract

Garlic virus D (GarV-D) was detected in garlic plants exhibiting yellow stripes, dwarfing and mosaic symptoms, by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). These plants were co-infected with Onion yellow dwarf virus (OYDV). Amplicons of ca. 750 bp and ca. 450 bp from infected plants were cloned and sequenced. By BLASTn analysis, virus under study (GenBank Accession No. KP862055) shared highest 88% nucleotide (nt) identity with GarV-D (HQ681944) from Iran in a region corresponding to coat protein (CP) and nucleic acid binding protein (NABP), whereas 450 bp sequence (KR045605) in a region corresponding to partial CP shared highest 91% nt similarity with GarV-D (KF550407) from Australia. The sequence (KP862055) shared 78-87.7% nt and 82.1-91.2% amino acid (aa) identity with previously reported isolates of GarV-D from different parts of world. To our knowledge this is first report of GarV-D occurring naturally on garlic from India.