Author(s):

Aniruddha Kumar Agnihotri and Sudhakar Prasad Mishra

Abstract: Tomato is the most important vegetable crop next to potato cultivated across the world. A severe leaf curl disease with puckering, mottling, chlorosis and distorted growth was observed in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) with significantly high disease incidence (15.2 to 35.9% in summer crop and 12.7 to 31.3% in Rabi crop) at Chitrakoot region during survey 2015-16 and samples were collected. Presence of huge population of whitefly indicated the possibility of begomovirus infection. The causal agent was amplified by PCR (~536 bp and ~1.1 kb) from 102 symptomatic leaves and 63 whiteflies DNA using two set of begomovirus specific degenerate primers. Randomly sequenced four amplicon showed highest similarity (96-99%) with Tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus (KF537780: India: Varanasi). In temporal dynamics study, transplanting of 5^th November had minimum disease incidence ranged from 3.3 to 12.2 per cent and low whitefly population than other two early planted crops. A positive linear correlation (y = 2.841x R² = 0.374) was recorded between whitefly and leaf curl incidence. The study covered survey, molecular diagnosis of Tomato leaf curl disease along with temporal dynamics and development of eco-friendly ToLCD management strategy in Chitrakoot area for the first time.

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