Archivio Journal of Plant Pathology

Abstract:

Jasmine (Jasminum sambac) is a popular flower and oil-bearing plant in the family Oleaceae. India is the second producer and exporter of jasmine in the world. In April 2012, commercial jasmine fields in the Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu (India) showed mosaic and chlorotic spots on the young leaves. Based on symptomatology, the involvement in disease aetiology of Groundnut bud necrosis virus (GBNV, genus Tospovirus, family Bunyaviridae) was suspected. The presence of this virus in symptomatic jasmine leaves was firsrt ascertained by direct antigen coating (DAC)-ELISA (Clark and Joseph, 1984), using a polyclonal antiserum raised to GBNV and it was further confirmed by RT-PCR using primers designed in the nucleocapsid gene (Satyanarayana et al., 1996). The 830 bp amplicon was cloned in pTZ57R/T vector (Fermentas, USA) and sequenced. The nucleotide sequence was deposited in GenBank (accession No. JQ995170). Sequence analysis (BioEdit v. 7.05) showed 99.7% and 100% identity with the nucleocapsid gene of other GBNV isolates at the nucleotide and amino acid levels, respectively. Phylogenetic trees constructed using MEGA version 4.0 confirmed the close relationship of the GBNV isolate from jasmine with another isolate from groundnut (GenBank accession No. HM770020). The infected crop was removed to eradicate the infection. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of GBNV on jasmine.