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ARS Home » Northeast Area » Washington, D.C. » National Arboretum » Floral and Nursery Plants Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #376477
Research Project: Detection, Identification, and Characterization of New and Emerging Viral and Bacterial Diseases of Ornamental Plants

Location: Floral and Nursery Plants Research

Title: First report of Tomato mosaic virus in chili pepper in Korea

Author
item CHO, IN-SOOK - Rural Development Administration - Korea
item YOON, JU-YEON - Rural Development Administration - Korea
item YANG, CHANG - Rural Development Administration - Korea
item CHAE, SOO-YOUNG - Rural Development Administration - Korea
item CHUNG, BONG-NAM - Rural Development Administration - Korea
item Hammond, John
item LIM, HYOUN-SUB - Chungnam National University

Submitted to: Journal of Plant Pathology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 4/29/2021
Publication Date: 5/3/2021
Citation: Cho, I., Yoon, J., Yang, C., Chae, S., Chung, B., Hammond, J., Lim, H. 2021. First report of Tomato mosaic virus in chili pepper in Korea. Journal of Plant Pathology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42161-021-00854-w.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42161-021-00854-w

Interpretive Summary: Virus infection of crop plants frequently results in losses of crop yield and/or quality. Tomato mosaic virus (ToMV), a virus commonly infecting tomato crops in many countries, was detected infecting a plant of a crop of chili peppers growing in the same greenhouse as a tomato crop in Korea. This virus had previously been reported from chili pepper crops in India and Vietnam, but never previously in Korea. Korean scientists worked with an ARS scientist from Beltsville, MD to identify the virus in both the peppers and tomatoes. ToMV is carried in the seeds of both peppers and tomatoes, so this finding highlights the need to check seeds of both crops for potential contamination in order to prevent introduction of the disease into new plantings. This information will be useful to seed producers and regulatory officials, to extension agents, and to vegetable crop growers, to aid them in minimizing infection of both chili pepper and tomato crops.

Technical Abstract: Tomato mosaic virus (ToMV), a member of the genus Tobamovirus in the family Virgaviridae causes serious losses in tomato and other plants showing mosaic, mottling, chlorosis of the leaves and uneven ripening of fruits. Infection of plants and seeds of Capsicum annuum L. has been reported in Asia from India (Chitra et al., 1999) and Vietnam (Bae et al., 2019), but not in Korea. In 2020, a chili pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) showing leaf and stem necrosis were observed in a greenhouse in Wanju, Korea, in which tomatoes were also growing. Total RNA was extracted using BCS plant RNA prep kit (Biocube Inc, Korea) from the symptomatic plant and subjected to high throughput sequencing; after initial processing using mRNA purification and ribo-zero RNA removal kits, a cDNA library was prepared using an Illumina TruSeq Stranded Total RNA kit and sequenced by the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 system (Macrogen Inc. Korea). De novo assembly of the 98,288,082 reads was performed by Trinity software (r20140717) and BLASTn analysis against the NCBI viral genome database of the assembled 90,821 contigs led to the identification of one contig with high (98.84 to 99.53%, 7,222 nt) nucleotide identity to the genome of ToMV, with highest identity to an isolate from Slovenia (MN267904); there were actually two separate alignments, of contig nt 867-7222 aligned with nt 4-6359 of MN267904 (99.52% identity), and contig nt 1-879 aligning to nt 6273-5395 (i.e. the negative strand) of MN267904 (99.66% identity). Manual editing of the apparent overlap yielded a nearly complete genome of 6356 nt, lacking 3 nt at the 5' and 27 nt at the 3' ends. Shorter contigs identified as fragments of pepper mild mottle virus (253 and 271 nt) and cassava vein mosaic virus (592 nt) were detected from the same sample library. To confirm the presence of ToMV, reverse transcription PCR was performed using virus-specific primer pairs ToMV-F/R (5’-TGATTGAAGATGAAGCCGAG-3’/5’-CCACGTGTGTTTTAGAAACA-3’). An RT-PCR product of the expected 580bp was obtained from the sample and the sequence (GenBank LC556234) shared 100% identity with the corresponding coat protein sequence of ToMV (MB006893). Besides ToMV, no other virus was detected; ToMV was similarly detected in 12 tomato plants in the same greenhouse. ToMV has caused serious threat to the cultivation of tomato in Korea with mixed infections of tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) and tomato chlorosis virus (ToCV) (Choi et al., 2018), thus it is important to survey and monitor the incidence and distribution in pepper to aid disease control in both pepper and tomato. To our knowledge, this is the first report of ToMV infecting chili pepper in Korea.