Natural Occurrence of Banana bunchy top virus in Ensete superbum in India

Abstract

The genus Ensete belongs to the family Musaceae of the order Zingiberales is grown throughout Africa and Southern Asia and contains as many as nine species. Ensete superbum (Roxb.) Cheesman, (2n = 18) commonly known as Ensete, is a large herb grown in India. The plant is well-known in the Western Ghats [2], Anaimalai hills, Sirumalai hills, Lower Pulney hills and other parts of the peninsular India. Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV; Genus Babuvirus; Family Nanoviridae) is a phytopathogenic virus associated with bunchy top disease of banana has become a major threat to banana and plantain cultivation in India and in several tropical regions of the world and cause significant yield losses [1]. The virus is phloem-limited and transmitted by the banana black aphid, Pentalonia nigronervosa (Coquerel) in a persistent circulative and non-replicative manner. The host range of BBTV is confined to Musa spp. In this paper we report natural occurrence of BBTV in Ensete in India. Samples of Ensetesuperbum plants exhibiting symptoms of intermittent dark green dots, dash, streaks of variable length like ‘Morse code’ pattern on leaf sheath, midrib, leaf veins and petioles and bunching of shorter and narrow leaves giving the appearance of bunchy top disease of banana were collected during December, 2011 from a garden in Coimbatore, TN (Fig. 1a, b). These Ensete plants also infested with banana black aphid. Aphids collected from symptomatic Ensete plants and healthy plants were transferred to healthy tissue culture raised Grand Nain banana plantlets for 48 h inoculation access. The inoculated plants were maintained in an insect-proof growth chamber maintained at 25 ± 0.5 °C and 12 h light/dark photoperiod.