Begomovirus infection on Cucumber in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Cucurbits are an important vegetable crops and among them Cucumber (Cucumis sativus) used mainly as vegetables and salad. The cucumber crop was found to exhibit yellow mosaic symptoms grown in the natural field in Saudi Arabia. We collected naturally infected samples and detected the begomovirus infection by polymerase chain reaction and full length as well as betasatellites viral genome was cloned and sequenced. The sequences of the full length viral genome had 2784 and betasatellites had 1377 nucleotides respectively. In a multiple sequences analysis, highest homology was observed with Tomato yellow leaf curl virus previously reported from Jizan and Al-Qasim, Saudi Arabia. The betasatellites sequences were also analyzed but, interestingly the highest homology was observed with Tomato yellow leaf curl betasatellites reported from Jeddah and Oman. In a phylogenetic tree analysis, the closest cluster was formed with begomovirus isolates identified earlier from Jizan and Al-Qasim. Based on the results obtained in this study, it is concluded that a variant of Tomato yellow leaf curl virus associated with yellow mosaic disease of cucumber in Saudi Arabia. These findings provide valuable information about the natural infection and disease spread caused by begomovirus in new geographic regions on new host.

Genetic diversity of begomoviruses infecting tomato plant in Saudi Arabia

“…Approximately forty different plant virus diseases have been described on more than thirty plant species in Arabian Peninsula (Al-Shahwan, 2003, Idris et al, 2012, Hosseinzadeh et al, 2014, Sohrab and Daur, 2018a, Sohrab and Daur, 2018b). The association of begomovirus with various crops such as, Amaranthus, Beans, Chili, Corchorus, Cucurbits, Mint, Okra, Pumpkin, Tobacco and Tomato have been reported so far from Arabian peninsula and the associated begomoviruses are known as TYLCV, ToLCOMV, ToLCSDV, ToLCSDV-Om, ChiLCV, OLCOMV, SqLCV, and BDMV-SA (Al-Shahwan et al, 1997, Al-Shahwan et al, 2002, Ghanem et al, 2003, Idris and Brown, 2005, Ajlan et al, 2007, Khan et al, 2008, Khan et al, 2014, Fazeli et al, 2009, Idris et al, 2011, Idris et al, 2012, Idris et al, 2014, Mohamed et al, 2012, Khan et al, 2013a, Khan et al, 2013b, Al-Saleh et al, 2014a, Al-Saleh et al, 2014b, Akhtar et al, 2014, Hosseinzadeh et al, 2014, Sohrab, 2016, Sohrab et al, 2016a, Sohrab et al, 2016b, Sohrab et al, 2016c, Sohrab et al, 2016d, Sohrab et al, 2016e, Sohrab, 2017, Sayed and Sohrab, 2017, Al-Shahwan et al, 2017, Sohrab and Daur, 2018a, Sohrab and Daur, 2018b). In this study, the association of begomovirus infection to tomato disease has been provided based on virus identification, sequencing and genetic diversity.…”

Molecular evidence for the occurrence of TYLCV on Mentha longifolia in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

“…Recently, the occurrence of begomoviruses causing disease in many crops like Amaranthus, Beans, Corchorus, Cucurbits, Okra, Tomato has been reported from Saudi Arabia [9][10][11][12][13][14]. Globally, many viruses infecting mint species have been identified and published [6][7][8].…”