Division of Plant Pathology, Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Hessaraghatta Lake PO, Bangalore-560089.
Chilli (Capsicum annuum. L) is an important vegetable and spice crop grown in India. The Chilli venal mottle virus (ChVMV) is a major threat for the production of chilli resulting in low yields poor fruit quality. Eighteen virus isolates showing symptoms like dark green mottling, reduced leaf size, leaf distortion, fewer and smaller fruits, vein banding, cupping, stunted growth, poor fruit set or deformed fruits were collected from the different chilli growing regions of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu. They were further confirmed by electron microscope and ELISA as ChVMV. Biological differentiation of the isolates was undertaken by using the 21 different host plants in order to obtain the more information on differences between the virus isolates, the results has shown few biological differences among the isolates. For molecular differentiation of these isolates the 3’ UTR and CP region of the isolates were amplified by using the ChVMV specific primers through RT-PCR. The PCR amplified products cloned and sequenced. The sequence analysis of isolates has indicated that there is a variation 3 to 9% among different isolates and all the isolates are the strains of ChVMV as they have more than 90% sequence identity.
