The nucleotide sequence of a recombinant tomato yellow leaf curl virus strain frequently detected in Sicily isolated from tomato plants carrying the Ty-1 resistance gene

In July 2016, an aggressive syndrome of tomato yellow leaf curl disease was reported in Sicily in tomato plants carryingthe Ty-1 resistance gene. A total of 34 samples were collected and analyzed. Twenty-seven out of the 34 samples analyzedappeared to contain only recombinant molecules. One full sequence was obtained after cloning. Alignments and plot similarityanalysis showed that the genome of the recombinant, named TYLCV-IL[IT:Sic23:16], was mostly derived from tomatoyellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), with a small region of 132 nucleotides in the non-coding region between the stem-loopand the start of the V2 ORF replaced by 124 nucleotides derived from a virus of a different species, tomato yellow leaf curlSardinia virus. All plants in which the new recombinant was detected belonged to resistant tomato cultivars.