Abstract

Chilli (Capsicum annuum L.) is an important commercial crop of India cultivated in an area of 14,00,000 acres with an annual production of 4,00,000 tons of dry chilli. Among the 18 viruses which have been reported to occur naturally on this plant (Ramakrishnan, 1959, 1961) only Indian chilli mosaic virus (Mc Rae, 1924) leaf-curl virus (Husain, 1932; Vasudeva, 1954), potato virus Y (Joshi and Bhargava, 1962) tobacco mosaic virus (Kandaswamy et al. 1963) and potato virus X (Anon., 1964) have been reported to occur on chilli in India. A virus disease of chilli was found to occur over wide areas in Tamil Nadu causing considerable loss of crop. Collections of this virus were made from various parts of the State and cultures established in glass house. The symptoms produced by this virus have already been described (Jeyarajan and Ramakrishnan, 1961). The properties of four other isolates producing similar symptoms on chilli were studied in order to identify them and the results are presented in this paper.

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