Abstract Rice (Oryza sativa L.,) is one of the most important
cereal crops worldwide. In this study, phytoplasmas have been
detected in symptomatic leaves of four varieties of rice using
nested-PCR with primer pairs P1/P7 and R16F2n/R16R2,
which amplified a 1.2 kb fragment of the 16S rRNA gene.
The nucleotide sequence analysis of the fragment had 100 %
identity among the sequences from the four varieties
(GenBank Accession numbers: JX290545, JX290546,
JX290547 and JX290548) and 99 % nucleotide sequence
identity with 16S rRNA gene sequences of the Rice orange
leaf disease phytoplasmas from the Philippines and Thailand,
Maize bushy stunt phytoplasma and Wheat blue dwarf
phytoplasma belonging to the ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma
asteris' (16SrI) group. This is the first report of 16SrI group
phytoplasmas infecting rice in India.