First report of ‘ <i>Candidatus</i> Phytoplasma trifolii’ associated with little leaf disease of <i>Capsicum chinense</i> from the northeast of India

King chilli or bhut jolokia (Capsicum chinense, family Solanaceae), is a variety of capsicum indigenous to northeast India. It considered one the hottest chillies in world and most valuable spice crops India, being grown for culinary medicinal purposes. In April 2022, phytoplasma-associated symptoms such as shortening leaves, petioles internodes, stunting whole plant were observed on C. chinense plants Jorhat, district Assam, India (Figure 1). To investigate possibility phytoplasma associated with symptoms, total DNA was isolated from leaf samples collected six diseased asymptomatic using CTAB protocol (Kollar et al., 1990). The analysed by direct nested PCR universal 16S rRNA primers, P1/P6 (Deng & Hiruki, 1991) R16F2n/R16R2 primers (Gundersen Lee, 1996), respectively. Amplicons expected size (1.5 Kb after 1.25 PCR) obtained only. Nested products Sanger sequenced each direction, consensus sequence deposited GenBank (Accession No. ON819760). BLASTn analysis revealed that 16Sr shared >99% identity those 16SrVI group including isolate used describe ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma trifolii’ (AY390261; Hiruki Wang, 2004) many strains found (e.g. MN861357 MN861370). A phylogenetic tree 2) an iPhyClassifier-based virtual RFLP gene little belongs the16SrVI-D subgroup similarity coefficient 1.00. Previously, different subgroups have been Capsicum annuum (‘Ca. P. asteris’, 16SrII-D; Sharma 2015). present study, we confirmed association ‘Ca. D phytoplasmas king chilli. 16SrVI-D has several other agricultural weeds (Dutta 2022). best our knowledge, this first report extends known host range affected had about 5–8% disease incidence based visual observation bearing mind observed, significant yield losses commercially may occur. Further epidemiological insect vector studies are needed help formulate effective management strategies prevent further spread.