Abstract
During the summer of 2009 in a greenhouse in the south of Ontario, Canada, up to 3% of the plants of pepper cultivars Score and Lamborgini (Capsicum annuum) showed mild growth reduction and abnormally small fruits. Symptoms were observed spreading along the rows. These observations suggested the presence of Pepper chat fruit viroid (PCFVd). Fruits from infected plants were analysed by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCCR) with primer pairs Pospi1-RE/FW and AP-FW1/RE2, which produced amplicons of 193 and 335 bp for PCFVd, respectively. The complete viroid genome of 348 nt was derived from overlapping sequence fragments after directly sequencing RT-PCR products (GenBank accession no. HQ731652). BLAST analysis of the obtained sequence showed a 100% sequence identity to that of the PCFVd isolate from the Netherlands (FJ409044). This is thought to be the first report of PCFVd in capsicum pepper in Canada.