Weed-infecting viruses in a tropical agroecosystem present different threats to crops and evolutionary histories

In the Caribbean Basin, malvaceous weeds commonly show striking golden/yellow mosaic symptoms. Leaf samples from Malachra sp. and Abutilon sp. plants with these symptoms were collected in Hispaniola from 2014 to 2020. PCR tests with degenerate primers revealed that all samples were infected with a bipartite begomovirus, and sequence analyses showed that Malachra sp. plants were infected with tobacco leaf curl Cuba virus (TbLCuCV), whereas the Abutilon sp. plants were infected with a new bipartite begomovirus, tentatively named Abutilon golden yellow mosaic virus (AbGYMV). Phylogenetic analyses showed that TbLCuCV and AbGYMV are distinct but closely related species, which are most closely related to bipartite begomoviruses infecting weeds in the Caribbean Basin. Infectious cloned DNA-A and DNA-B components were used to fulfilled Koch’s postulates for these diseases of Malachra sp. and Abutilon sp. In host range studies, TbLCuCV also induced severe symptoms in Nicotiana benthamiana, tobacco and common bean plants; whereas AbGYMV induced few or no symptoms in plants of these species. Pseudorecombinants generated with the infectious clones of these viruses were highly infectious and induced severe symptoms in N. benthamiana and Malachra sp., and both viruses coinfected Malachra sp., and possibly facilitating virus evolution via recombination and pseudorecombination. Together, our results suggest that TbLCuCV primarily infects Malachra sp. in the Caribbean Basin, and occasionally spills over to infect and cause disease in crops; whereas AbGYMV is well-adapted to an Abutilon sp. in the Dominican Republic and has not been reported infecting crops.