New virus detected in chillies in India

Ludhiana, Oct 10 (UNI) A virus known as 'begomoviruses', which reduces the yield, has 'infected' the chilli crop in India for the first time.

The World Vegetable Centre--AVRDC located at Taiwan has detected the presence of this virus in the samples taken from Ludhiana.

This virus is believed to be a tentative strain of the chilli leaf curl virus which is prevalent in Multan in Pakistan.

The Centre has called upon breeders at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) that the presence of the 'begomoviruses' needs to be considered for developing chilli cultivars and virus resistant chilli plants.

PAU's Department of Vegetable Crops, Head- cum- senior olericulturist, Dr Daljit Singh today said that chilli is an vegetable important crop. It is sown on an area of 9882 hectares in Punjab, mainly in the districts of Sangrur, Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib, Amnritsar and Jalandhar.

In Punjab. the chilli production is around 15,888 tonnes annually.

Dr Daljit Singh, who is working in collaboration with the scientists of AVRDC, said the tomato leaf curl begomoviruses infecting chillies in India was first noticed in 2004. The results of the analysis done at the World Vegetable Centre in Taiwan have been recently published.

This is for the first time that this begomoviruses has infected chilli crop in India and it will significantly reduce productivity, he claimed.

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