ABSTRACT Radish is an important vegetable crop used in our daily dishes as salad, vegetable and other common cuisines. In the present study, phytoplasma associated with the flat shoot and shoot proliferation son radish plants grown at Narendra Dev University of Agriculture & Technology, Ayodhya campus, India were attempted. The DNA was extracted from diseased and healthy shoots and subjected to nested PCR assays with P1/P7 and R16F2n/R16R2 phytoplasma specific primer pairs. Amplification of 1250 bp product was achieved in all the symptomatic radish samples. The amplified product was cloned and directly sequenced. Sequence analysis of 16Sr RNA gene through BLASTn, phylogeny and virtual RFLP comparison confirmed radish isolate as Ca. P. Australasia related strain (16SrII-D sub group). To our best knowledge, this is the first report of the 16Sr II-D subgroup phytoplasma associated with radish in India.

Keywords: Candidatus, diagnosis, molecular, phytoplasma, proliferation, radish