First Report of HLB Causal Agent in Psyllid in State of Bahia, Brazil

The state of Bahia ranks fourth in the national rank for citrus production, and the region of Chapada Diamantina is emerging an important producer of orange for fresh fruit market. Huanglongbing (HLB) is the major phytosanitary threat to Bahia citriculture. In Brazil, the disease was first reported in 2004 in São Paulo state. The bacterium Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas) is one of the causal agents of HLB, which is transmitted by the insect vector Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Liviidae). Bahia is a HLB-free area; therefore, it is essential to monitor its citrus-producing areas to early detect any possible introduction of the CLas. This study aimed to monitor the presence of the bacteria in the insect vector. Diaphorina citri samples were collected from 2011 to 2014 in different cities located at Chapada Diamantina region and tested by qPCR for the presence of CLas. Three samples were considered positive to bacterium, and all from psyllids collected on Murraya paniculata in the city of Seabra.

Association Between Citrus Flushing Cycles and Asian Citrus Psyllid Demography in Huanglongbing-Free Area in Brazil

Diaphorina citri Kuwayama (Hemiptera: Liviidae), named as Asian citrus psyllid (ACP), is the vector of the bacterium associated with huanglongbing (HLB), the most destructive citrus disease. The use of citrus flushing and ACP monitoring tools is essential for the knowledge of the occurrence pattern of cycles of both and for the improvement of the ACP management. During 3 years, 20 branches from 20 trees were evaluated for vegetative flushing, ACP abundance, and occupation in tree and branches in a Brazilian citrus area free for HLB. The obtained data was investigated through spectral and co-spectral analyses. Four to 12 flush shoot cycles occurred per year, which were similar to abundance and occupation cycles of ACP, with an apparent synchronization between these variables. In general, there was a difference from 14 to 19 days between flushing and ACP peaks, with an occurrence of the flushing peaks before the ACP peaks. Results will provide useful information to citrus growers and agricultural defense agencies to apply a suitable and targeted ACP management, which will avoid or delay the disease entrance into still free HLB areas. In addition, the modeling of occupation and abundance cycles of vectors as applied in this study may be useful for other pathosystems which insect vectors are associated or even in the intrusion monitoring programs.

Chiral Spin-Orbital Liquids with Nodal Lines

Strongly correlated materials with strong spin-orbit coupling hold promise for realizing topological phases with fractionalized excitations. Here, we propose a chiral spin-orbital liquid as a stable phase of a realistic model for heavy-element double perovskites. This spin liquid state has Majorana fermion excitations with a gapless spectrum characterized by nodal lines along the edges of the Brillouin zone. We show that the nodal lines are topological defects of a non-Abelian Berry connection and that the system exhibits dispersing surface states. We discuss some experimental signatures of this state and compare them with properties of the spin liquid candidate Ba_{2}YMoO_{6}.

Non-Gaussian spatial correlations dramatically weaken localization

We perform variational studies of the interaction-localization problem to describe the interaction-induced renormalizations of the effective (screened) random potential seen by quasiparticles. Here we present results of careful finite-size scaling studies for the conductance of disordered Hubbard chains at half-filling and zero temperature. While our results indicate that quasiparticle wave functions remain exponentially localized even in the presence of moderate to strong repulsive interactions, we show that interactions produce a strong decrease of the characteristic conductance scale g^{*} signaling the crossover to strong localization. This effect, which cannot be captured by a simple renormalization of the disorder strength, instead reflects a peculiar non-Gaussian form of the spatial correlations of the screened disordered potential, a hitherto neglected mechanism to dramatically reduce the impact of Anderson localization (interference) effects.

First Report of a 16SrIII-L Phytoplasma Associated with Frogskin Disease in Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) in Brazil

Cassava (Manihot esculenta Crantz) is a major staple crop in developing countries and a large source of raw material for industrial purposes as flour, starch, and ethanol. In July 2012, 24 cassava genotypes (corresponding to 1.85% of the accessions) with typical symptoms of frogskin disease (CFSD) were observed in one of the maintenance areas of the Brazilian Cassava Germplasm (located at Embrapa Cassava & Fruits, Cruz das Almas, Bahia State, Brazil). All diseased plants were asymptomatic on the aboveground parts (leaves and stem). However, for accessions BGM 880, BGM 1094, BGM 1100, BGM 1212, BGM 1218, and BGM 1526, all roots showed a woody appearance, thickened cork-like peel with opaque aspect, and coalescent lip-like slits in a honeycomb pattern. Based on literature description, two pathogens could be associated with CFSD: a dsRNA virus (belonging to family Reoviridae) and a 16SrIII-L phytoplasma (1). To investigate the presence of phytoplasma associated with the CFSD symptoms, total DNA was extracted from 0.5 g of root tissue collected from both symptomatic and asymptomatic roots by scratching the secondary vessel at the center of the cassava root with a CTAB method. The nested PCR was carried out using phytoplasma-specific primer set P1/Tint followed by R16F2n/R16R2, targeting the 16S rRNA gene sequence of 1.2 kb in length, for the final reaction (4). No phytoplasma was detected in asymptomatic cassava roots that were sampled from the same field. A posterior extraction of total RNA was made but no dsRNA was noticed on the agarose gel, and reaction of RT-PCR with specific primers (2) had no amplification. In order to characterize the strains, the 1.2-kb amplicon was digested with BamHI, MseI, MspI, KpnI, and TaqI endonucleases. The resulting patterns indicated that the symptomatic accessions were infected with a phytoplasma belonging to the 16SrIII group, sharing similarities with pseudo gel mapping from the reference strain of Peach X-Disease Phytoplasma (GenBank Accession No. L33733). Nested PCR products from accessions BGM 1526 and BGM 1212 were purified and sequenced by Macrogen, (Seoul, South Korea) in both directions, manually edited, and the consensus sequences were deposited in the NCBI database (GenBank Accession Nos. KF019184 and KF019185). Phylogenetic studies were conducted based on maximum parsimony, neighbor-joining, and maximum likelihood analysis for 16S rRNA. The phytoplasma 16S rRNA gene sequences from both strains had 99% identity (P < 0.0001) with the 16SrIII-L CFSD phytoplasma (EU346761 and AY737647), described by Alvarez et al. (1) infecting cassava in Colombia. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a phytoplasma associated with Cassava Frogskin Disease in Brazil, where only the dsRNA virus was recognized as causing this symptom (3). This is not likely to be an isolated case, and possibly more cassava plants are infected with this phytoplasma in Brazil. Due to the difficulties to observe the symptoms at the field level, this could be an emerging disease in that country. References: (1) E. Alvarez et al. Plant. Dis. 93:1139, 2009. (2) L. A. Calvert et al. J. Phytopathol. 156:647, 2008. (3) L. S. Poltroniere et al. Comun. Tec., Belem-PA. 006:2p, 1999. (4) C. D. Smart et al. Appl. Environ. Microb. 62:2988, 1996.

Diversity among isolates of cowpea severe mosaic virus infecting cowpeas in northeastern Brazil

Eleven isolates of cowpea severe mosaic virus (CPSMV), a member of the genus Comovirus, were selected from 50 samples collected of nine cowpea fields in Northeastern Brazil (Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe, Bahia, and Distrito Federal) and partially sequenced. The RNA1 partial sequence, corresponding to the helicase, viral genome-linked protein, picornain 3C-like protease, and the RNA-directed RNA polymerase genes from CPSMV, had high identity among isolates, varying from 98 to 100%. No evidence was found for intermolecular or intramolecular recombination. Phylogenetic analysis confirmed that the Brazilian CPSMV isolates are substantially different from the CPSMV strain USA. Despite the low variability found among Brazilian CPSMV isolates, there were notable differences in the symptomatology of infected cowpea plants, ranging from mild to moderate. Previous reports have demonstrated an association between CPSMV symptom determinants and helicase. However, we found no correlation between the helicase mutations and symptoms caused by CPSMV. Nevertheless, all isolates with mutation R to K in the protease provoked severe symptoms. This type of information can provide a foundation for the development of strategies to produce durable resistant cowpea lines. It is crucial for strategies based on DNA sequence-dependent technologies, such as inhibition with RNAi.

Quantum ripples in strongly correlated metals

We study how well-known effects of the long-ranged Friedel oscillations are affected by strong electronic correlations. We first show that their range and amplitude are significantly suppressed in strongly renormalized Fermi liquids. We then investigate the interplay of elastic and inelastic scattering in the presence of these oscillations. In the singular case of two-dimensional systems, we show how the anomalous ballistic scattering rate is confined to a very restricted temperature range even for moderate correlations. In general, our analytical results indicate that a prominent role of Friedel oscillations is relegated to weakly interacting systems.

Electronic Griffiths phase of the d = 2 Mott transition

We investigate the effects of disorder within the T = 0 Brinkman-Rice scenario for the Mott metal-insulator transition in two dimensions. For sufficiently weak disorder the transition retains the Mott character, as signaled by the vanishing of the local quasiparticle weights Z_{i} and strong screening of the renormalized site energies at criticality. In contrast to the behavior in high dimensions, here the local spatial fluctuations of quasiparticle parameters are strongly enhanced in the critical regime, with a distribution function P(Z) approximately Z;{alpha-1} and alpha --> 0 at the transition. This behavior indicates a robust emergence of an electronic Griffiths phase preceding the metal-insulator transition, in a fashion surprisingly reminiscent of the "infinite randomness fixed point" scenario for disordered quantum magnets.

Tomato yellow spot virus, a tomato-infecting begomovirus from Brazil with a closer relationship to viruses from Sida sp., forms pseudorecombinants with begomoviruses from tomato but not from Sida

Geminiviruses are characterized by a circular, single-stranded DNA genome and twinned icosahedral particles. Begomoviruses (whitefly-transmitted geminiviruses) are a major constraint to crop production worldwide. In Brazil, tomato-infecting begomoviruses emerged as serious pathogens over the last 10 years, due to the introduction of a new biotype of the insect vector. Tomato yellow spot virus (ToYSV) is a newly described begomovirus originally isolated from tomato, but phylogenetically closer to viruses from Sida sp. A study was performed to determine the viability of pseudorecombinants formed between the DNA components of ToYSV and other weed- and tomato-infecting begomoviruses from Brazil. Despite its closer relationship to weed-infecting viruses, ToYSV was only capable of forming viable pseudorecombinants with tomato viruses. An infectious pseudorecombinant formed between ToYSV DNA-A and tomato crinkle leaf yellows virus (TCrLYV) DNA-B induced severe symptoms in Nicotiana benthamiana. This was attributed, at least in part, to the fact that the origins of replication of both components had identical Rep-binding sequences. However, this was not the case for another infectious pseudorecombinant formed between tomato golden mosaic virus (TGMV) DNA-A and ToYSV DNA-B, which have different Rep-binding sequences. These results reinforce the notion that pseudorecombinant formation cannot be explained solely on the basis of phylogenetic relationships and conserved iteron sequences, and suggest that the TGMV Rep protein may be more versatile in terms of recognizing heterologous DNA components than that of ToYSV.

Attending to the non-preferred hand improves bimanual coordination in children

The effect of attentional focus in bimanual coordination was investigated from a developmental perspective by examining performance of right- and left-handed children, 5-8-years and 9-12-years old, on bimanual reciprocal tapping tasks. Attentional focus was either specified, by asking the children to attend to the preferred or to the non-preferred hand, or unspecified for the execution of the tasks. When attention was oriented to the non-preferred hand we found a reduced movement time and a lower frequency of errors. Performance differences for handedness and age-groups were observed when the children were oriented to attend to the preferred hand or when there was no instruction regarding attention. These differences in performance were eliminated when attention was oriented to the non-preferred hand.