First Report of Sida golden mosaic virus Infecting Snap Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris) in Florida.

In October 2006, snap bean (Phaseolus vulgaris 'Titan') plants in an Alachua County field exhibited symptoms of foliar mottling, puckering, and curl. Symptomatic plants were distributed along field margins infested with whiteflies (100% incidence). Six collected leaf specimens all tested positive for nuclear inclusion bodies typical of begomoviruses with the methodology outlined by Christie et al. (1). To confirm the putative begomovirus association, total DNA was extracted with Qiagen's DNeasy Plant Mini Kit (Qiagen, Valencia, CA). The degenerate Begomovirus primers 5'-GCCCACATYGTCTTYCCNGT-3' and 5'-GGCTTYCTRTACATRGG-3' were used to amplify a 1.1-kb fragment of DNA-A (2). Primers SiGMVf 5'-CCTAAGCGCGATTTGCCAT-3' and SiGMVr 5'-TACAGGGAGCTAAATCCAGCT-3' were designed to amplify the remaining 1.5 kb of the DNA-A component. The sequence of both PCR products was compiled to generate a complete sequence of an A component (2,633 nt). BLAST analysis of this sequence (GenBank Accession No. GQ357649) isolated from snap bean indicated 95% nucleotide identity to Sida golden mosaic virus (SiGMV) (GenBank Accession No. AF049336) isolated from Sida santaremensis from Florida. To our knowledge, this is the first report of SiGMV in Florida snap beans. Further study is warranted to examine the etiological and economic implications of this finding. References: (1) R. G. Christie et al. Phytopathology 76:124, 1986. (2) M. R. Rojas et al. Plant Dis. 77:340, 1993.