Disease Note.

Partial Molecular Characterization of Bean Golden Mosaic Virus Isolates from Jamaica and Central America.. W. McLaughlin, Department of Biochemistry and the Biotechnology Centre, University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica.. M. R. Rojas, M. K. Nakhla, S. H. Hidayal, and D. P. Maxwell, University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706.. Plant Dis. 78:1220. Accepted for publication 11 October 1994.. Copyright 1994 The American Phytopathological Society. DOI: 10.1094/PD-78-1220C.

Bean golden mosaic disease caused by bean golden mosaic geminivirus (BGMV) is a serious constraint on bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) production in tropical and subtropical regions of the Western Hemisphere, where bean-infecting geminiviruses are genetically diverse (1). A polymerase chain reaction with primers PALlcl978 and PARIc496 (2) was used to obtain =1.1 -kb DNA-A fragments of geminiviruses collected in Costa Rica in 1990, Jamaica in 1991, Nicaragua in 1992, and Guatemala in 1992 from beans with golden mosaic symptoms. Partial nucleotide sequences for the AC1 ORFs (corresponding to nucleotide position 2,004 to 2,295 of a BGMV isolate from Guatemala [GenBank No. M91604]) were obtained from clones of these fragments (GenBank No. L34266, L34267, L34268, and L34269 for isolates from Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Jamaica, respectively). Pairwise comparisons indicated that these four isolates had nucleotide identities of >94% with each other and with the type II isolates of BGMV from Puerto Rico (GenBank No. Ml0070), the Dominican Republic (L0I635) and Guatemala (M91604) and ‹80% identity with type I BGMV from Brazil (M88686), bean dwarf mosaic virus (M88179), tomato golden mosaic virus (K02029), tomato mottle virus (M90495), bean calico mosaic virus (L22758), and squash leaf curl virus (M38I83). These data extend the distribution of type II isolates of BGMV (1) to Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica, and support regionalization of efforts to breed beans for BGMV-resistance.