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Detection and identification of 16SrXIII-F and a novel 16SrXIII phytoplasma subgroups associated with strawberry phyllody in Chile

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Abstract

Since the year 2015, strawberry plants with symptoms of phyllody, achenes’ hypertrophy and leaf reddening have been observed in several fields in various regions of Chile. In recent surveys on five individual fields in Biobío and Araucanía regions, samples were collected from symptomatic plants and DNA was extracted. Two genomic regions corresponding to the 16S rRNA and tuf genes were amplified by nested PCR using phytoplasma universal primers. Three individual clones of each amplicon from each sample were then sequenced. The RFLP analyses of the 16S rDNA amplicons showed that all of the symptomatic plants were infected by phytoplasmas enclosed in the 16SrXIII group. This result was confirmed by phylogenetic analysis with tuf amplicons. RFLP similarity coefficients indicated the presence of two phytoplasmas, one belonging to the 16SrXIII-F subgroup, while the other resulting not enclosed in any of the described subgroups and therefore it was assigned to the newly proposed 16SrXIII-K subgroup.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Professor Assunta Bertaccini from the Department of Agricultural Sciences, Plant Pathology, Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy, for the critical review of this manuscript. We also thank the researchers Exequiel Vergara and Rocío Camps from Servicio Agrícola y Ganadero, Chile, for providing essential information of strawberry producers and field locations. This work was funded by National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (FONDECYT) of Chile, Proyecto de Iniciación No. 11160719 and Proyecto Postdoctoral 2017 No. 3170120.

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  1. Facultad de Ciencias Agronómicas, Departamento de Sanidad Vegetal, Universidad de Chile, Av. Santa Rosa, 11315, Santiago, Chile

    Weier Cui, Nicolás Quiroga, S. Tomislav Curkovic, Alan Zamorano & Nicola Fiore

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  1. Weier Cui
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  2. Nicolás Quiroga
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  3. S. Tomislav Curkovic
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Correspondence to Nicola Fiore.

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Cui, W., Quiroga, N., Curkovic, S.T. et al. Detection and identification of 16SrXIII-F and a novel 16SrXIII phytoplasma subgroups associated with strawberry phyllody in Chile. Eur J Plant Pathol 155, 1039–1046 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10658-019-01808-w

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