New Disease Reports
New Disease Reports (2014) 30, 14. [http://dx.doi.org/10.5197/j.2044-0588.2014.030.014]
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First report of Pepper mottle virus infecting chilli pepper in India

Sukhjeet Kaur 1, S.S. Kang 1, Abhishek Sharma 2* and Shikha Sharma 1

*abhishek@pau.edu

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Received: 23 Aug 2014; Published: 13 Sep 2014

Chilli pepper (Capsicum annuum) is an important vegetable and spice crop in India. Leaf samples from plants exhibiting stunting, mottling, crinkling and misshapen leaves or malformed and discoloured fruits were collected from pepper-growing districts of the Punjab, India in 2013 and 2014. Crude sap was extracted from symptom-bearing leaves using 0.1 M phosphate buffer (pH 7), and used to mechanically inoculate five plants each of seven different plant species. Symptoms developed on C. annuum cv. 'California Wonder' (mild mosaic and leaf deformation), Solanum lycopersicum cv. 'Punjab Upma' (mild mosaic with slight yellowing), Nicotiana benthamiana, N. glutinosa, N. tabacum cvs. 'White Burley' and  'Xanthi' (mild mosaic symptoms), whereas no symptoms were observed on S. tuberosum. 

The symptom-bearing leaf samples collected from different pepper-growing areas were analysed using DAS-ELISA kits (Agdia, Elkhart, USA) with commercial antisera specific for commonly occurring pepper viruses: Pepper mild mottle virus (PepMMoV), Pepper mottle virus (PepMoV), Potato virus Y (PVYO/C, N) and Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV; subgroups I and II). Of the 115 leaf samples, 34% tested positive with PVYO/C antiserum, 8% with PepMoV antiserum and 4% with CMV sub-group I and II antisera. The presence of the potyvirus was confirmed by RT-PCR using the P9502/CPUP (van der Vlugt et. al., 1999) and the Sprimer/M4T (Chen et. al., 2001) primer sets. Amplified products of the expected size were cloned and sequenced and the sequences obtained were deposited in GenBank (Accession Nos. KJ564302 and KJ744259). Multiple sequence alignment using Clustal Omega (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools) showed that sequences KJ564302 and KJ744259 shared 95.1- 97.8% and 94.87-99.47% nucleotide sequence identity respectively with published sequences of PepMoV (AF501591, AB126033, EU586121 EU586125 and EU 586124). Based on these results, we concluded that the virus isolated from the diseased pepper plants was PepMoV. Mottle disease of chilli was characterised using the micro-precipitin test by Sandhu & Chohan (1979). This is the first time that two sensitive assays, ELISA and RT-PCR based partial sequence characterisation have been used to identify and confirm the occurrence of PepMoV in pepper from India. Further studies are required to fully characterise this isolate and determine its distribution and incidence.

Figure1+
Figure 1: Field-grown chilli pepper showing symptoms of crinkling, mottling, dark green vein banding and misshapen leaves.
Figure 1: Field-grown chilli pepper showing symptoms of crinkling, mottling, dark green vein banding and misshapen leaves.

References

  1. Chen J, Chen J, Adams MJ, 2001. A universal PCR primer to detect members of the Potyviridae and its use to examine the taxonomic status of several members of the family. Archives of Virology 146, 757-766.
  2. Sandhu KS, Chohan JS, 1979.  Studies on the characterization of the mottle disease of chilli (Capsicum annuum) in the Punjab. Indian Journal of Mycology and Plant Pathology 9, 177-182.
  3. Van der Vlugt RAA, Steffens P, Cuperus C, Barg E, Lesemann DE, Bos L,Vetten HJ, 1999. Further evidence that Shallot yellow stripe virus (SYSV) is a distinct potyvirus and reidentification of Welsh onion yellow stripe virus as a SYSV Strain. Phytopathology 89, 148-155. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1094/PHYTO.1999.89.2.148]
To cite this report: Kaur S, Kang SS, Sharma A, Sharma S, 2014. First report of Pepper mottle virus infecting chilli pepper in India. New Disease Reports 30, 14. [http://dx.doi.org/10.5197/j.2044-0588.2014.030.014]

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