| Summary: | Geminivirus diseases of cotton are on the rise, worldwide, yet few have been studied in adequate detail to permit the implementation of rational approaches to disease control. The rising costs of managing the whitefly vector, coupled with substantial losses caused by geminivirus-incited diseases now hinder cotton production by requiring inputs that are beyond economic feasibility. The need for geminivirus disease resistant cultivars in diverse cotton producting areas and against different viral genotypes presents a new challenge. To meet this need, information about the identity, distribution, and relevant biotic characteristics of cotton -infecting geminiviruses is needed This project addresses this problem through the molecular analysis of the genomes of cotton-infecting geminivirus from cotton throughout the world Here, sequence similarities of the coat protein gene and of the non-coding IR/CR involved in regulating virus replication and transcription were examined by comparative sequence analysis to achieve virus identification. This is the first effort to determine virus identity and to map the distribution of geminiviruses on a global basis. The outcome of this effort will be a data base containing biotic and molecular information that will permit rapid and accurate geminivirus identification, and the selection of relevant viral species for development of cotton cultivars with disease resistance to the geminiviruses specific to individual production areas.
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