First report of tomato yellow Leaf curl virus and cucumber mosaic virus infecting Huoxiang (Agastache rugosa) in CHINA

Abstract

Huoxiang (Agastache rugosa, family Labiatae) is used as a traditional Chinese medicine. In 2017, Huoxiang with stunted, chlorotic, and mosaic symptoms were found in Haidian District of Beijing, China. To identify the causal agent(s), total RNA of symptomatic leaves was extracted and further analyzed by high-throughput sequencing (HTS). Sequence analyses revealed nine contigs with high nucleotide sequence identity (93%–100%) with tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) from the genus Begomovirus, family Geminiviridae and seventeen contigs with high nucleotide sequence identity (85%–100%) with cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) from the genus Cucumovirus, family Bromoviridae. To confirm the HTS results, RT-PCR was performed with TYLCV-specific primers and CMV-specific primers, respectively. Two fragments of 651 bp (GenBank accession No. MG775386) and 657 bp (MG754206) were obtained, respectively. Sequencing and BLASTn analysis revealed that the 651 bp fragment shared 100% nucleotide identity with TYLCV isolate ZJHZ (MF590742), and the 657 bp fragment shared 98.9% nucleotide identity with CMV strain K (AF127977). To our knowledge, this is the first report of TYLCV and CMV infecting A. rugosa.