Response of chili varieties to the infection with Tomato brown rugose fruit virus

ABSTRACT

Tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV) is an emerging virus that threatens tomato and chili production worldwide. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effect of ToBRFV infection on plant morphology and fruit quality in eight varieties of pepper and to propose a diagrammatic scale to evaluate severity in infected leaves considering the percentage of affected leaf area. Sixteen treatments were tested, consisting in eight varieties of chili and two experimental conditions (inoculated and non-inoculated). Five days after transplanting, each chili variety was mechanically inoculated with ToBRFV and morphological and fruit quality variables were evaluated. The comparison of means of each inoculated versus non-inoculated variety was performed with the t-Student test (P ≤ 0.05) for independent groups. ToBRFV infected all inoculated plants causing local necrotic lesions, chlorosis, mosaic, mottling, stem necrosis, ampulation, deformation, rolling and leaf necrosis depending of the variety; likewise, asymptomatic plants were observed. ToBRFV significantly affected height, number of internodes, number of flowers, fresh root weight, average fruit weight, number of seeds, and polar-equatorial diameter of the fruit. The habanero chili showed the least severity, while the highest severity was shown in the serrano chili ‘Tampiqueño’.

Keywords
Severity scale; ToBRFV; symptoms; morphological variables and fruit quality