Plant Virus Laboratory and Biotechnology Unit, Central Research Institute for Jute and Allied Fibres, Barrackpore, Kolkata-700 120.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the XVIII National Conference of Indian Virological Society at Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India, December 11–13, 2008.
Jute (Corchorus spp.), belonging to the family Tiliaceae, is one of the most important bast fibre crops of India and are infected by many diseases. Among them a whitefly-vectored yellow mosaic disease is known to infect C. capsularis since 1975. To confirm the association of begomovirus with the disease, total nucleic acid was isolated and purified from the symptomatic leaves of the whitefly-transmitted diseased plants grown under glasshouse condition. Begomovirus specific different primers for DNA-A and DNA-B were employed which amplified 1.2 kb and 0.8 kb fragments of DNA-A and DNA-B, respectively. After sequencing of these two fragments, two novel abutting PCR primer sets were designed for amplification of entire DNA-A and DNA-B components of the associated begomovirus. The size specific amplicons with respect to DNA-A and DNA-B were cloned and sequenced. Sequence analysis revealed that DNA-A and DNA-B consisted of 2686 and 2666 nucleotides, respectively. Both the DNA-A (94.3%) and DNA-B (91.1%) shared highest sequence identity with Corchorus golden mosaic virus reported from Vietnam. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the present isolate of the begomovirus appeared to be more closely related to the New World begomoviruses rather than those reported from the Old World. This is the first report of the association of a New World begomovirus from a Old World country.
