The First Occurrence of Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus in Tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) in Japan.

Abstract

A new virus disease occurred in tomato in Shizuoka and Aichi prefectures. The virus from Shizuoka was transmitted by Bemisia tabaci of B biotype, but not by sap. Its narrow host range was restricted to five species from two families. Geminate particles were observed in partially purified virus preparation from infected leaves of Datura stramonium. Specific DNA bands were detected from infected plants by polymerase chain reaction using two sets of primers designed for DNA A component of geminiviruses. The viruses from Shizuoka and Aichi had extremely high degrees of nucleotide sequence similarities (98%) with a mild isolate of tomato yellow leaf curl virus from Israel (TYLCV-Is-M). Their genomic organization of DNA A was the same as that of TYLCV. The amino acid sequence similarity between six ORFs of TYLCV-Is-M and the equivalent ORFs of the virus isolates from Shizuoka and Aichi was over 95%. From these results, the two virus isolates were identified as TYLCV and were closely related to TYLCV-Is-M from Israel. This report is the first on the occurrence of TYLCV in tomato in Japan.