A novel cassava-infecting begomovirus from Madagascar: cassava mosaic Madagascar virus.

Cassava mosaic geminiviruses (CMGs) are implicated in cassava mosaic disease (CMD), the main constraint to cassava production in Africa. Here, we report the complete nucleotide sequences of the DNA-A and DNA-B of a newly characterized CMG found infecting cassava in Madagascar, for which we propose the tentative name cassava mosaic Madagascar virus. With the exception of two recombinant regions that resembled a CMG, we determined that the non-recombinant part of the DNA-A component is distantly related to the other CMGs. Whereas the DNA-B component possesses one recombinant region originating from an unidentified virus, the rest of the genome was seen to be closely related to members of the species East African cassava mosaic Zanzibar virus (EACMZV). Phylogenetic analysis based on complete genome sequences demonstrated that DNA-A and DNA-B components are outliers related to the clade of EACMV-like viruses and that DNA-A is related to the monopartite tomato leaf curl begomoviruses described in islands in the south-west Indian Ocean.