HOST-RANGE OF TOMATO MOTTLE VIRUS, A NEW GEMINIVIRUS INFECTING TOMATO IN FLORIDA

A geminivirus causing mottling, upward led curling, and stunting was observed infecting tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill. var. esculentum) throughout production areas of Florida since I989; and it has been named the tomato mottle virus (TMoV). The virus was inoculated by whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius)) to 41 plant species representing eight families. Species of four genera became infected, three in the Solanaceae (Lycopersicon, Nicotiana, and Physalis) and one in the Fabaceae (Phaseolus). The infection in Phaseolus vulgaris L. was symptomless and was identified by nucleic acid spot hybridization with a full-length B component probe and by back inoculation to tomato by whiteflies. TMoV resembled other tomato-infecting geminiviruses from the Western Hemisphere in its narrow host range, in which species of the Solanaceae were predominate, but differed in the type of symptoms produced in tomato and in the species of hosts which were infected. Transmission via tomato seed was not found in 3,000 seedlings examined.