Tobacco mosaic virus Detected in Vegetatively Propagated Petunia Hybrids 'Surfinia'

Introduction of vegetatively propagated Petunia hybrids since 1992 led to increasing virus infections of propagation material. Petunia hybrid 'Surfinia' cultivated for pot-plant showed yellowing symptom along with stunt. Flowers were smaller in size and showed color-break symptom. Tobacco mosaic virus(TMV-pet) was isolated from the diseased petunia. Healthy petunia plants inoculated with TMV-pet induced mottle on leaves and color-break on flowers, and plants were stunted. Nucleotide sequences of coat protein gene amplified from RNA prepared from Nicotiana tabacum cv. Samsun infected with TMV-pet were determined(GenBank accession no. DQ981481). It showed 99.0% nucleotide sequence homology with TMV-potato3-2(GenBank accession no. AF318215) isolated from potato showing yellow mosaic and stunt symptom, and with a TMV Korean strain(GenBank accession no. X68110). This is the first reported observation of TMV from vegetatively propagated petunia in Korea.