First Report of Potato virus M and Chrysanthemum stunt viroid in Solanum jasminoides

In 2005, a plant of the ornamental crop Solanum jasminoides from the Netherlands was submitted for testing on viruses and viroids because of its intended use for propagation. Sap from this plant was mechanically inoculated to the test plant species Chenopodium quinoa, Nicotiana benthamiana, N. hesperis-67A, and N. occidentalis-P1 (3). N. hesperis-67A showed chlorotic local lesions and rugosity followed by vein necrosis, N. occidentalis-P1 showed necrotic local lesions and systemic leaf distortion, and the two other test plant species remained symptomless. Potato virus M (PVM) was identified by double antibody sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay using leaves from S. jasminoides and N. hesperis-67A. The plant of S. jasminoides was also tested for the presence of viroids by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) with universal pospiviroid primers Pospi1-RE/FW (2). This reaction yielded an amplicon of the expected size of 198 bp. The sequence showed 100% identity to an isolate of Chrysanthemum stunt viroid (CSVd; NCBI GenBank Accession No. AF394453). Subsequently, the complete sequence of our viroid isolate (GenBank Accession No. DQ406591) was determined from the amplicon obtained after RT-PCR using specific primers for the detection of CSVd (1). The viroid isolate from S. jasminoides consisted of 354 nucleotides and showed the highest identity (98.6%) to a chrysanthemum isolate of CSVd (GenBank Accession No. AB055974). Therefore, the viroid was identified as CSVd. To our knowledge, this is the first report of PVM and CSVd in S. jasminoides. Reference: (1) R. Hooftman et al. Acta Hortic. 432:120, 1996. (2) J. Th. J. Verhoeven et al. Eur. J. Plant Pathol. 110:823, 2004. (3) J. Th. J. Verhoeven and J. W. Roenhorst, EPPO Bull. 33:305, 2003.