Abstract
Sugarcane grassy shoot is an important disease in sugarcane affecting the crop in all stages of growth right from germination to the maturity phase. The disease causing pathogen Ca. Phytoplasma sacchari primarily spread from one field to another through infected setts and secondarily from one plant to another through phloem sap feeding leaf hopper insects such as Deltocephalus vulgaris, Cofana unimaculata, Exitianus indicus, and Maiestas portico. Recently, a natural infection of ScYLV was reported in Sorghum almum (Columbus grass) and S. bicolor (grain sorghum) in Florida, USA. Since sugarcane and sorghum have high genetic proximity, we have suspected sorghum and maize crops grown nearby sugarcane areas as a potential reservoir for sugarcane viruses and phytoplasma. Sorghum cultivars showing typical chlorotic spindle leaves with severe stunting were randomly collected in sorghum fields in Coimbatore District during the year 2020 revealed the presence of SCGS phytoplasma through nested-PCR assays and by sequencing of the highly conserved 16SrRNA regions of the genome. The pairwise multiple sequence alignments of SCGS sequences from S. bicolor of this study has clearly shown the highest nucleotide similarities of 99 to 100% with other SCGS sequences from India, SCWL phytoplasma from China, and Sri Lanka.
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The authors thank the Director, ICAR-Sugarcane Breeding Institute, Coimbatore for providing all the facilities to carry out the work.
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Nithya, K., Vardhan, J.V., Balasaravanan, S. et al. Natural infection of Ca. Phytoplasma sacchari causing sugarcane grassy shoot disease in Sorghum bicolor. Vegetos 37, 94–98 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42535-022-00560-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42535-022-00560-7