Characterization of potyviruses infecting ornamental crops

摘要

Potyviruses are widely spread in vegetatively propagated ornamental crops. They decline the quality of blooms and cause significant economic losses. National Botanical Research Institute has a rich collection of ornamental plants. Symptomatology and conventional serology can not provide reliabe detection of poty viruses. Moreover, from India molecular information is not available on potyviruses infecting economically important ornamentals. To characterise and develop the reliable detection system, aPCR based method has been standardized for the amplification of the partly coat protein gene and compile 3' untranslated region (3'UTR) of the potyvirus genome. Total RNA was isolated from potyvirus infected ornamentals-gladiolus, narcissus, amaryllis and transcribed into cDNA. Employing potyvirus group-specific degenerate primers from the conserved regions of the coat protein gene and the Poly-A tail at the 3' end, PCR amplification was performed. Further work, to clone and sequence the PCR amplified products from the core regions and the 3'UTRs of these viruses, is in progress.