Chilli pepper rugose mosaic disease caused by Pepper veinal mottle virus occurs on Ishigaki Island, Japan

Abstract

Pepper veinal mottle virus (PVMV) has been detected in chilli pepper (Capsicum annuum) for the first time on Ishigaki Island of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. In the early 2010s, leaves of chilli plants (cv. Kahat-ace) developed virus-like symptoms such as rugosity, mosaic, vein banding, mottling, distortion with puckering and malformation. The biologically cloned isolate OKP2 was able to infect solanaceous plants such as bell pepper, chilli pepper, petunia, tomato, Nicotiana benthamiana and N. clevelandii. The coat-protein-encoding region shared 99 % nucleotide identity with that of PVMV-ns1 isolate collected in Taiwan. The implications of this record are discussed.