Relative incidence of cucurbit viruses and relationship with bio-meteorological variables

LUCIANI, CECILIA ELIZABETH; PEROTTO, MARÍA CECILIA; POZZI, ELIZABETH ALICIA; CELLI, MARCOS GIOVANI; BRUNO, CECILIA; CONCI, VILMA CECILIA

AUSTRALASIAN PLANT PATHOLOGY

CSIRO PUBLISHING

Lugar: Collingwood; Año: 2020 vol. 49 p. 167 - 174

0815-3191

Environmental heterogeneity can shape the plant-virus relationship, furthering the appearance of new diseases in crops, oraltering disease incidence and severity. In this work, we studied the virus association with environmental heterogeneity takinginto account bio-meteorological variables and virus distribution. In Argentina, three potyviruses, Watermelon mosaic virus(WMV), Zucchini yellow mosaic virus (ZYMV), and Papaya ringspot virus (PRSV), and a cucumovirus, Cucumber mosaicvirus (CMV), are the most common viruses infecting cucurbits. We identified the bio-meteorological variables that had thegreatest impact on disease incidence. All the crops were infected with more than one virus in all the studied environments.Molecular and serological analyses showed the highest relative incidence for WMV (46%), the lowest for CMV (9%), andintermediate values for PRSV and ZYMV (20% and 24%, respectively). Infected plants had a random distribution. Viruses andbio-meteorological variables were highly correlated, with high support (Pearson?s r = 0.96, P < 0.001). Temperature variableswere negatively correlated with the three potyviruses. CMV was positively correlated with temperature. Relative humidity waspositively correlated with potyviruses, but was not correlated with CMV. Our research field data and analyses may help to predictthe outbreak of viral diseases in cucurbits crops.