Passion fruit is a crop of great economic importance in Tropical countries, distinguishing Brazil as the greatest producer. The present work reports the infection of passion fruit by a virus belonging to the genus Begomovirus, family Geminiviridae in the state of Alagoas, Brazil. Infected plants showed symptoms of yellow mosaic, drastic reduction of growth and leaf area. The DNA extracted from symptomatic plants was used as template in PCR's, containing the pairs of primers PAL1v1978 and par1C496 or PBL1v2040 and PCRc1, which direct the amplification of regions of approximately 1.2 kb DNA-A and 0.6 kb DNA-B, from begomovírus genome, respectively. Fragments of the components A and B with expected size were amplified from samples of symptomatic plants, confirming the infection by a begomovírus.
Geminiviridae; diagnosis; PCR
