MOLECULAR IDENTIFICATION AND PAIRWISE SEQUENCE COMPARISON OF A VIRUS INFECTING BITTER LEAF IN CALABAR METROPOLIS
Abstract
The natural occurrence of mosaic, leaf distortion and green vein banding on bitter leaf was
observed in Calabar. Disease incidence, host range studies on the symptomatic leaves and
the use polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used for diagnostic. Of the 23 symptomatic
leaves tested, 18 representing 78.2 % showed disease incidence of the virus in Calabar,
Results from host range studies showed that the virus had a narrow host range infecting only
members of the fabaceae family. Result from the PCR showed that the purified PCR product
was amplified to approximately 686 bp in size. BLASTn algorithm of the isolate showed
07% similarity with Vernonia green vein-banding virus(KY751914). Phylogenetic tree also
showed the isolate was nearest to KY751914. The results showed the natural occurrence of
the species VGVBYV in bitterleaf.
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