First Report of Pepper mottle virus in Tomato.

In 2000, a breeding company submitted a tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum) sample from Guatemala for diagnosis. The plants showed necrotic lesions on leaves surrounded by some chlorosis, necrotic streaks on stems, and large superficial necrotic lesions on fruits. By mechanical inoculation of plant sap to different plant species, symptoms appeared in Capsicum annuum 'Westlandse Grote Zoete', Lycopersicon esculentum 'Money-maker', Nicotiana benthamiana, N. bigelovii, N. glutinosa, N. hesperis-67A, N. occidentalis-P1, N. tabacum 'White Burley', and Physalis floridana. Systemically infected leaves from N. occidentalis-P1 were used for all further experiments. Leaf dip preparations were analyzed by transmission electron microscopy and revealed the presence of filamentous virus particles typical of a potyvirus. Double-antibody sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay tests for Potato virus A, V, and Y, Tobacco etch virus, and Wild potato mosaic virus were negative. An antiserum (PepMoV/DSMZ As 0186) to Pepper mottle virus (PepMoV), however, gave a positive reaction. To obtain further evidence for the presence of this virus, the nucleotide sequence of the complete 3' nontranslated region (3NTR) and the 3' terminal part of the coat protein gene (3CPG) was determined using the set of degenerate primers P9502/CPUP (1). The obtained nucleotide sequence (approximately 700 bp) was deposited in GenBank under Accession No. AF440801. It showed 93 to 94% 3NTR and 90 to 93% 3CPG homology with the three sequences of PepMoV from pepper already present in GenBank. The two viruses with the next closest nucleotide sequence homology were Potato virus V and Potato virus Y showing up to 80 and 75% homology with the 3CPG and up to 53 and 48% homology with the 3NTR, respectively. Based on these results, we concluded that the virus isolated from the symptomatic tomato plants was PepMoV. Because of the relatively low homologies with the pepper isolates of PepMoV, this tomato isolate might be a separate strain of the virus. To our knowledge, this is the first report of the occurrence of PepMoV in tomato. Reference: (1) R. A. A. van der Vlugt et al. Phytopathology 89:148, 1999.