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Identification of Tomato mosaic virus Infection in Lisianthus in Taiwan

In recent years, Lisianthus (Eustoma russellianum (Don.) Griseb) has become popular as potted plants and cut flowers in Taiwan. They are grown in the central and southern regions of the island. Since 1998, diseased plants with mosaic symptoms, followed by necrosis of leaf tissues, were observed in commercial greenhouses and field-grown lisianthus. Newly emergent leaves were curled and smaller compared with those on healthy plants. These symptoms greatly decreased the commercial value of the crop. Rigid rods similar to tobamoviruses that measured 300 × 18 nm were found consistently associated with symptomatic plants. In July 2002, a virus culture was isolated from diseased lisianthus from Chiayi County, Taiwan and established and maintained in systemic hosts Nicotiana tabacum L. and N. benthamiana Domin. Chlorotic and necrotic spots developed on lisianthus leaves 1 to 2 weeks after inoculation with the virus; symptoms eventually became systemic. Virions were purified from inoculated N. tabacum. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis showed that the virus contained one 18-kDa (M_r) polypeptide. The virus reacted positively in agar gel double diffusion tests and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays with antisera prepared to Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) or Tomato mosaic virus (ToMV) (gifts of S. D. Yeh, National Chung Hsing University, Taichung, Taiwan). A viral coat protein (CP) gene approximately 0.5 kb was amplified by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction from total RNA prepared from infected N. benthamiana using 5′-GCGAGCCATGGATTCTTACTCAATTACT as a forward primer and 5′-ACTCTCGGATCCTTAAGATGCAGGTGCAGA as a reverse primer. Comparison of the 480-nt CP gene region with that of ToMV-OM (GenBank Accession No. X02144) (3) revealed 99.2% nucleotide identity and 99.4% amino acid identity. It shares, however, 74.4% nucleotide identity and 83.9% amino acid identity with CP genes of TMV-U1 (GenBank Accession No. AX040174) and TMV-vulgare (GenBank Accession No. J02415) (1). The virus induced local lesion responses similar to ToMV on inoculated N. tabacum cv. White Burley, N. sylvestris Speg. & Comes, and Datura stramonium L. Inoculation of TMV, however, resulted in a systemic infection in these plants. Results from sequence analysis and diagnosis based on host reaction to the virus inoculation indicated that the tobamovirus infecting lisianthus in Taiwan is an isolate of ToMV. The virus is economically important to lisianthus and tomato in Taiwan. To our knowledge, this is the first report of ToMV causing disease on lisianthus in Taiwan. The disease was previously observed on lisianthus in Italy (2).

References: (1) P. Goelet et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 79:5818, 1982. (2) V. Lisa and A. Gera. Lisianthus. Pages 443--448 in: Virus and Virus-like Diseases of Bulb and Flower Crops. G. Loebenstein et al. eds. John Wiley and Sons, West Sussex, U.K., 1995. (3) T. Ohno et al. J. Biochem. 96:1915, 1984.