1Integral University, Kursi Road, Lucknow.
2National Botanical Research Institute, Rana Pratap Marg, Lucknow-226 001.
3Sugarcane Research Station Kunraghat, Gorakhpur-273 008, India.
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.
Begomovirus belongs to family Geminivirdae are transmitted by whitefly (Bemisia tabaci) and have a bipartite genome (DNA- A and DNA-B). Begomoviruses cause a major problem for many crops in India and abroad. The important crops affected are tomato, cotton, cucurbits, chilli, cassava, grains, legumes and various ornamental plants. Several members of Cucurbitaceae family serve as food and a source of secondary metabolites. The symptoms of severe yellow mosaic and leaf curl were observed in cucurbitaceous crops in various locations of North India. Leaf samples of infected cucurbitaceous plants were collected during the survey. The total DNA was extracted from these samples and PCR were performed using the Begomovirus genus specific degenerate primers for diagnosis of the begomovirus infection. The expected size ∼800 bp amplicon were obtained in number of infected samples which were further confirmed by southern hybridization with the probe of a well known begomovirus. Further we have cloned and sequenced the coat protein region of DNA A component form the different samples collected from different locations. The analysis of sequence data and phylogenetic relationship of the virus isolates revealed that they belong to the begomovirus genus but they were found to be of diverse species. The detailed results would be discussed in the conference.
