Muntingia yellow spot virus: a novel New World begomovirus infecting Muntingia calabura L.

Romay Gonzalez, Gustavo [UCL] Chirinos, Dorys T. [Facultad de Ingeniería Agronómica, Universidad Técnica de Manabí, Manabí, Ecuador.] Castro, Rossana [Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, Universidad Agraria del Ecuador, Guayas, Ecuador.] Espinoza, Winston [Facultad de Ciencias Agrarias, Universidad Agraria del Ecuador, Guayas, Ecuador.] Bragard, Claude [UCL]

The whole genome sequence of a begomovirus (family Geminiviridae) infecting Muntingia calabura L. (family Muntingiaceae) from the province of Guayas in Ecuador was determined in this work. The major symptom observed on this plant species was yellow spots on leaves. The nucleotide sequences of three DNA-A clones and one DNA-B clone were compared to those of other begomoviruses. The DNA-A clones displayed the highest similarity to isolates of pepper leafroll virus (PepLRV), with 87.4 to 88.1% sequence identity. Likewise, the DNA-B clone showed the highest similarity (79.3-79.6% sequence identity) to PepLRV isolates. According to the demarcation criteria for begomovirus species, the begomovirus described in this work, for which we propose the name "muntingia yellow spot virus", represents a novel species. To our best knowledge, this is the first report of a begomovirus infecting a plant of the family Muntingiaceae.