Occurrence of begomoviruses in cotton-vegetable agro ecosystem in India

Begomoviruses are the important pathogens of variety of crop plants and are responsible for causing huge economic losses. It is assumed that cotton vegetable agro eco system plays a vital role in the complex etiology of the diseases caused by begomoviruses. Therefore, the present work was planned to study the relationship among begomoviruses infecting cotton, chilli, radish, tomato and papaya. For this purpose, the symptomatic leaves of these plants were collected and were processed for DNA isolation. The amplified coat protein gene of begomoviruses was cloned and sequenced. The phylogenetic analysis showed that begomoviruses infecting cotton are totally different from the begomoviruses infecting other crops. Based on the coat protein gene sequences, the viruses infecting cotton were identified as cotton leaf curl virus, chilli leaf curl virus in chilli, radish leaf curl virus in radish, tomato leaf curl virus in tomato and papaya leaf curl virus in papaya. Key words: Begomovirus, cotton, vegetables, variability.