Leaves of infected cotton curl upward and bear leaf-like enations on the underside along with vein thickening.

(A. Nadeem and Z. Xiong, University of Arizona) This virus devastated the Pakistan cotton industry in early 1990s where it caused an estimated yield reduction of 30-35%.

All except Cotton leaf crumple virus have a monopartite genome, with all viral products required for replication, systemic movement and whitefly transmission encoded on a single DNA component of c. 2.75 kB (DNA A).

DNA β has a single open reading frame (βC1 ORF), which encodes a suppressor of RNA silencing.

DNA 1 is homologous to the DNA-R component of the nanoviruses and encodes a master replication initiator (M-Rep) protein but its presence does not alter symptom expression.