First report of Rice orange leaf disease phytoplasma (16 SrI) in rice (Oryza sativa) in India

Abstract

Rice (Oryza sativa L.,) is one of the most important cereal crops worldwide. In this study, phytoplasmas have been detected in symptomatic leaves of four varieties of rice using nested-PCR with primer pairs P1/P7 and R16F2n/R16R2, which amplified a 1.2 kb fragment of the 16S rRNA gene. The nucleotide sequence analysis of the fragment had 100 % identity among the sequences from the four varieties (GenBank Accession numbers: JX290545, JX290546, JX290547 and JX290548) and 99 % nucleotide sequence identity with 16S rRNA gene sequences of the Rice orange leaf disease phytoplasmas from the Philippines and Thailand, Maize bushy stunt phytoplasma and Wheat blue dwarf phytoplasma belonging to the 'Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris' (16SrI) group. This is the first report of 16SrI group phytoplasmas infecting rice in India. © 2013 Australasian Plant Pathology Society Inc.