Tobacco leaf curl Cuba virus infects the weed Malachra alceifolia in Jamaica

Samples of the malvaceous weed Malachra alceifolia from Spanish Town (St. Catherine, Jamaica), with yellow mosaic symptoms, were tested for begomovirus infection with primer pair PAL1v1978/PAR1c715 (Rojas et al., 1993). These primers are designed to amplify a segment of the DNA-A component spanning the 5’ends of the coat protein and replication-associated protein genes, as well as the intergenic region. A 1.4 kb fragment of the DNA-A generated by PCR was cloned and sequenced (accession number DQ856582).

BLASTN analysis shows the M. alceifolia virus to be most similar (94.3% nucleotide sequence identity) to Tobacco leaf curl Cuba virus (TbLCuCUV; accession number AM050143), a begomovirus species recently reported from Cuba, which causes foliar rugosity in tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum; Morán et al., 2005). The intergenic regions show 94.0% identity and the two viruses have identical, predicted iteron sequences. These results indicate that the Jamaican virus is a likely isolate of the Tobacco leaf curl Cuba virus, for which the designation Tobacco leaf curl Cuba virus-[Jamaica] (TbLCuCUV -[JM]) is proposed. This conclusion is supported by phylogenetic analysis, which segregates TbLCuCUV -[JM] with the Cuban isolate.

This is the first report of the occurrence of TbLCuCUV in Jamaica and the first report of a geminivirus infecting M. alceifolia. Although geminiviral infection of tobacco has not been reported in Jamaica, this finding indicates that Jamaica’s small commercial tobacco cultivation may be at risk of infection by TbLCuCUV.