Abstract:
The potyvirus, Bean yellow mosaic virus (BYMV) is an economically important plant virus
which infects many leguminous crops (family Fabaceae) as well as members of the
Liliaceae. BYMV has been detected in South Africa on Freesia spp., Gladiolus hortulanus,
Lathyrus odoratus, Lupinus albus, Viola odoratus (Gorter, 1977) and Pisum sativum (Jooste
et al., 2001), but few further studies have been conducted on this virus locally. During the
current study, a RT-PCR capable of generic detection of potyviruses (Zheng et al., 2010) was
utilised to detect these viruses from plant samples submitted by growers and previously
shown to contain potyvirus-like flexuous rod-shaped particles by electron microscopy.
