Association of ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris’ with phyllody of Crown Daisy in India

Abstract

The Crown Daisy flowers showing typical phyllody and virescence symptoms were observed in Pune, Maharashtra, India. The total genomic DNA was extracted from the symptomatic plants which was used for amplifying the 16S rRNA region. The nested PCR amplification using universal phytoplasma primers confirmed the phytoplasma presence which was further confirmed upon sequencing which revealed 100% identity with ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris’ 16SrI-B phytoplasmas. Further the virtual RFLP analysis of 16S rRNA gene sequence of F2n/R2 region (1.2 kb) showed a similarity coefficient of 1.00 with 16SrI-B subgroup phytoplasma.