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A Yellow Mosaic Disease of Soybean in Northern India is Caused by Cotton leaf curl Kokhran virus

Soybean, Glycine max (L.) Merr., is a protein- and oil-rich crop cultivated in India and abroad. A yellow mosaic disease was observed on soybean with 80 to 90% disease incidence during August 2005 at fields of the National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow, in northern India. Soybean plants were found to be infested with whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci) suggesting begomovirus etiology. The disease agent was transmitted experimentally by whiteflies, and symptoms developed after 23 days. Total DNA was isolated from 51 leaf samples collected from 42 symptomatic and 9 asymptomatic plants. Polymerase chain reaction was performed using begomovirus coat protein-specific primers 5′-ATGGCGAA GCGACCAG-3′ and 5′-TTAATTTGTGACCGAATCAT-3′ (AM180920/ AM180921). An amplicon of the expected size (~800 bp) was obtained in all 42 symptomatic leaves but not from any of the nine asymptomatic leaf samples. The amplicon was cloned, and the identical sequence of three clones was submitted to GenBank (Accession No. DQ343283). BLAST search of nucleotide sequences revealed 95% identity with Cotton leaf curl Kokhran virus (CLCKV) (GenBank Accession Nos. AJ002449, AJ002448, AJ496286, and AY456683) and 57% identity with Mungbean yellow mosaic India virus (MYMIV-Sb, GenBank Accession No. AY049772). Results indicated that the virus associated with yellow mosaic disease of soybean is an isolate of CLCKV rather than MYMIV-Sb (1) reported earlier on soybean from northern India. To our knowledge, this is the first report of soybean as a new host of Cotton leaf curl Kokhran virus.

Reference: (1) K. S. Usharani et al. Curr. Sci. 86:845, 2004.