Occurrence of a Candidatus Phytoplasma pruni Related Strain Associated with Commercial Poinsettias in Turkey

Abstract

The poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherrima Willd. ex Klotzsch.) is one of Turkeys most important potted ornamental crops. Potted poinsettia plants exhibiting smaller-sized brilliant red bracts against the green leaves with free-branching were collected from commercial florists in three provinces of Turkey. In iPhyClassifier analysis, the query 16SrDNA sequences of our isolates shared 99.58% identity with that of the Candidatus Phytoplasma pruni. Our leaf samples consistently yielded a product of 0.7 kb by PCR with primers (KFD4F/KFD4R), which was newly designed based on X-Disease group (16SrIII) of phytoplasma secY sequences available in GenBank. The partial 16S rRNA sequences were used for phylogenetic analyses covering 41 taxa from the group of 16SrIII Candidatus Phytoplasma strains, including 14 strains causing disease on poinsettia worldwide. The sequences that caused the same disease in poinsettia plants in Finland, the USA, Mexico, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, and Canada, including three strains from Turkey, formed a mono-phylogenetic group with a support value of 87%.