Virology

Biography

Biography: Sunil Kumar Snehi

Abstract

Cucurbitaceous crops grown in India have their economic importance as vegetables and as fruits. The begomoviruses and their associated diseases in cucurbit crops are emerging problems throughout India. Begomoviruses cause a number of serious diseases of cultivated crops and they are considered as the major constrains for cultivation of several crops all over the world. Begomoviruses cause some typical symptoms of yellow mosaic, yellow vein, yellow vein net, leaf curl, distortions, enation, growth stunting and fruit deformation resulting in drastic reduction of yield and market quality of various cucurbitaceous crops grown all over India. The yellow mosaic and yellow vein symptoms were observed on bitter gourd (Momordica charantia), pointed gourd (Trichosanthes dioica), pumpkin (Cucurbita pepo), pumpkin (Cucurbita maxima), sponge gourd (Luffa cylendrica), ridged gourd (L. acutangula) and cucumber (Cucumis sativus) being cultivated in Utter Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh during a survey. The presence of begomovirus was detected from the total DNA extracted from infected leaf samples of these species by PCR using the specific primers of a well characterized begomovirus. The ~800 bp amplicons of these isolates were cloned, sequenced and data obtained were compared with each other and with sequence database available in GenBank for best sequence identities and phylogenetic relationships. Based on highest 97-99% sequence identities and closest phylogenetic relationships, four representative begomovirus species were identified as Ageratum enation virus (from T. dioica), Squash leaf curl China virus (from C. maxima); Tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus (from M. charantia, L. cylendrica and L. acutangula) and Tomato leaf curl Palampur virus (from C. pepo). These results suggested existence of a high genetic diversity among begomoviruses infecting cucrbitaceous crops. The details of research finding will be discus in the conference.