Papaya yellow leaf curl virus: A newly identified begomovirus infecting Carica papaya L. from the Indian Subcontinent

ABSTRACT

India is one of the world’s largest producers of papaya. Viruses, mainly begomoviruses and potyviruses, cause a significant loss in papaya production. The study described here has identified a new species of begomovirus and a new species of betasatellite infecting Carica papaya in India. The sequences of the begomovirus and betasatellite show 90.03% nucleotide sequence identity to an isolate of Radish leaf curl virus and 92.25% identity to an isolate of Tomato leaf curl betasatellite, respectively. Maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree of begomovirus sequence of isolate DP2 (KX353622) showed distant relationships with previously characterised begomoviruses. Recombination analysis proposed six recombination breakpoints in begomovirus genome with other geographical begomovirus isolates.

KEYWORDS:

• Papaya yellow leaf curl virus
• begomovirus
• papaya
• phylogeny
• recombination

Acknowledgments

The author/s are expressing thanks to Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (file no 09/1064 (0002)/2013-EMR-1) for financial support.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research [09/1064 (0002)/2013-EMR-1]