Characterization of tomato leaf curl Palampur virus naturally infecting wild melon in Oman

Weeds plants serve as a reservoir of begomoviruses Begomovirus and play a vital role in the diversity of single stranded DNA viruses. Wild melon (Cucumis melo) plants showing leaf curling and color breaking symptoms were collected and used in for Begomovirus amplification. Cloning, sequencing and bioinformatics analysis revealed the association of a bipartite Begomovirus isolate with the diseased C. melo host. The complete genome of DNA-A (2756 bp) of a bipartite Begomovirus isolate exhibited 99.5% nucleotide similarity with DNA-A of tomato leaf curl Palampur virus (ToLCPalV) reported from Iran ([IR: Jir8:T58P:08] FJ660431). Further pairwise identity derived implemented in sequence demarcation tool identified that the DNA-B (2719 bp) showed maximum 98.7% sequence identity to the corresponding DNA-B of ToLCPalV ([IR: Jir-T65X:08] JF501720). The phylogenetic dendrogram of DNA-A and DNA-B genome components grouped respectively with ToLCPalV DNA-A and DNA-B of Iran isolates and far from Pakistan and India clade. This study provides the first identification of a bipartite Begomovirus ToLCPalV from C. melo in Oman and also indicates the requirement for more investigation of ToLCPalV, as ToLCPalV is a major threat particularly to tomato crops in India and Pakistan and recently introduced in Iran.