1Division of Plant Pathology, Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India
2Department of Botany, DDU Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur-273009, Uttar Pradesh, India
*Corresponding author: G.P. Raoe-mail: gprao_gor@rediffmail.com
Online published on 25 March, 2015.
Little leaf and witches’-broom symptoms on Cannabis sativa L. ssp. sativa plants were recorded in sesame phyllody infected fields at Kushinagar district of eastern Uttar Pradesh, India in September 2013. The DNA extracted from symptomatic Cannabis sativa L. ssp. sativa (CSS) plants yielded amplicons of 1.25 kb in nested PCR assays with R16F2/R2n primer pair. BLASTn comparison and phylogenetic analysis of 16SrDNA phytoplasma sequence of CSS phytoplasma isolate revealed association of ‘Ca. Phytoplasma asteris’ (16Sr I group) with symptomatic cannabis plants. Our results suggest that CSS may play an important role in perpetuation of sesame phyllody phytoplasma in nature.
Hemp, PCR assay, phylogeny analysis, 16Sr I group, putative alternate host
