Molecular evidence for the occurrence of (PuYV), a new polerovirus species associated with pumpkin plants.

In India, cucurbit aphid-borne yellows virus, a cucurbit-infecting polerovirus, is emerging in the recent past with respect to its occurrence on different crops and geographical locations. This emphasized the need for an investigation to search for the possible occurrence of the other related species In this view, different cucurbit hosts exhibiting severe chlorosis, bleaching, and yellowing symptoms were collected from the Vegetable Experimental Fields of IARI, New Delhi. The samples exhibiting yellowing and bleaching symptoms were associated with small isometric virions measuring ~ 25 nm under transmission electron microscope. The RT-PCR assays using generic (covering the partial , intergenic region and partial region) and complete gene-specific primers confirmed the association of a polerovirus. Further, complete gene sequence analyses revealed the association of a distinct species of with the pumpkin samples. These isolates showed the gene sequence identities below the species demarcation limit (90%) with the corresponding gene sequences of already reported polerovirus isolates. The results of this study provide the molecular evidence for the occurrence of a new species of , named tentatively as (PuYV) in India.