Molecular and biological characterization of a severe isolate of Tomato chlorotic dwarf viroid containing a novel terminal right (TR) domain sequence

Tomato chlorotic dwarf viroid (TCDVd) manually inoculated to transgenic (cv.‘Desiree’) potato plants containing antimicrobial cationic peptides failed to develop symptoms in above ground plant parts, but infected tubers were symptomatic. Plants from the infected tubers (second generation plants) emerged as either severely stunted (bushy stunt isolate, BSI) or tall and symptomless. Molecular characterization of BSI isolates showed TCDVd sequence variants 95 to 98% identical to TCDVd sequences from the database, while a viroid variant identical to TCDVd type isolate (acc # AF162131) was cloned from symptomless plants. The TCDVd BSI variants had novel U165C, GU177-178AA, and UCAC181-184CUUU nucleotide substitutions in the terminal right (T_R) domain of the viroid molecule. The cloned viroid cDNAs of the BSI were infectious to experimental (cv. ‘Sheyenne’) tomato plants causing stunted plants with profuse auxiliary shoots. Visual evaluation of the susceptibility of the BSI to 18 potato and 21 tomato cultivars revealed severe symptoms in most cultivars of both species. The progeny variants accumulating in each potato and tomato cultivar exhibited the same novel T_R domain in most cultivars, with only a slight variation in a few. The severity of the stunting symptoms induced by TCDVd from BSI isolates in both potato and tomato cultivars has not been noted previously with other TCDVd isolates and, as such, it is proposed that this new isolate be recognized as a distinct genotype. Emergence of this type of sequence variant in commercial fields or commercial tomato greenhouses could potentially cause relevant losses in both crops.