DEVELOPMENT OF A PEPPER (Capsicum annuum L.) HYBRID VARIETY WITH RESISTANCE TO POTATO VIRUS Y (PVY) USING MOLECULAR BREEDING

Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.) is an important vegetable crop grown and consumed worldwide. Potato virus Y (PVY) is a globally economically important pathogen which significantly reduces the yield and quality of cultivated pepper. The virus is considered as a major limiting factor to the economic production of pepper in the province of KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) in the Republic of South Africa (RSA). Many applied practices to control the spread of PVY are ineffective to mitigate the losses incurred by many farming communities across the KZN province. Therefore, the objectives of this study was to determine the full genome sequence of a PVY isolate from KZN, to identify resistance alleles in commercially available pepper varieties in KZN and to develop a pepper hybrid variety with resistance to PVY using a molecular breeding strategy The first part of the study was conducted to determine the first full genome sequence of a PVY isolate (JVW-186) infecting pepper from KZN. The complete genome sequence of JVW-186 was assembled from overlapping RT-PCR clones using MEGA 5 software. Individual ORFs were identified using the nucleotide data base NCBI and aligned using CLUSTALW. RDP4 software was used to identify recombination junctions in th