مشخصات پژوهش

Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV; Begomovirus coheni) is a highly destructive plant virus, especially in tropical and subtropical regions worldwide. This study detected TYLCV and its associated satellites‒Gossypium darwinii symptomless alphasatellite (GDarSLA, Colecusatellite gossypiumdarwinii) and/or tomato leaf curl betasatellite (ToLCB, Betasatellite solani)‒in symptomatic guar and sunflower samples from Jiroft, southeastern Iran. Full-length sequences of two TYLCV isolates shared 89.1% nucleotide identity with each other and 85.5–99.45% with other Iranian isolates from various crops available in GenBank. Furthermore, GDarSLA and ToLCB satellites shared 93.4–99.9% and 95.6–96.8% nucleotide sequence identities with other Iranian isolates recovered from different crops. Agroinfiltration of guar and sunflower using a previously constructed infectious clone of the virus and/or the associated betasatellite (TYLCV or TYLCV + ToLCB) resulted in symptomless TYLCV infection; however, the betasatellite was not detected in both plants. Inoculation of tomato with the same constructs induced symptom of varying severity depending on the presence of ToLCB in the inoculation tests. The phenotypic differences observed in infected guar and sunflower under natural versus experimental conditions are discussed. This study identifies sunflower as a new TYLCV host. Considering the limited cultivation of both guar and sunflower in Jiroft, climatic conditions of this region promote continuous exposure of various plants to TYLCV and the associated satellites.