Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) was cultivated on 1,342 hectares in the United States in 2023, producing 10,540 tonnes (FAOSTAT). During a field survey conducted in 2023, a single okra plant in a plot (roughly 0.1 acre) cultivated in Tulsa County, Oklahoma, displayed symptoms of virescence, phyllody, and witches’-broom. Leaf tissues were collected from one symptomatic (sample K7) and three asymptomatic plants. Total RNA and genomic DNA were extracted using the Plant RNA Isolation Kit (Norgen Biotek Corp, Ontario, Canada) and Plant DNA Kit (Omega BIO-TEK). RNA from the samples was subjected to high-throughput sequencing (HTS) on the NovaSeq X Plus at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation. After trimming, 16,454,026 reads (average length = 151 bp) were de novo assembled using CLC Genomics Workbench v22.0.1 (QIAGEN) and analysed via BLASTn and BLASTx analyses against the NCBI GenBank (nr) database. Thirty-six contigs (205-664 bp) showed similarity to the ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma 16SrI group with an average coverage ranging from 1.6 to 118.1X. Later in the season, disease progression was observed on the same plant (K7), and additional symptomatic leaf tissues were collected and processed as described above. The second HTS run yielded 53,701,463 reads (average length = 130 bp). De novo assembly produced 617 contigs (190-15,179 bp), matching ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris’ (rapeseed phyllody phytoplasma, CP055264) with coverage ranging from 2.04 to 23,516.25X. Raw sequencing reads were deposited in the NCBI database under the Sequence Read Archive (SRA) SRR32988524. To confirm the HTS results, PCR was performed using DNA from the K7 sample and healthy okra plants, with two primer sets designed from HTS-derived contigs (1F CTCATCCTGTAAGCGTTGCC, 1R AGCGGCTTTGATGTTGGATC (446 bp), and 2F CCAAACCGCAGTGCTAACAT, 2R GTTTTGACCCCACGAGCTTT (product size 524-bp). Both expected amplicons (446 and 524 bp, respectively) were detected in the symptomatic sample (K7) but none in the asymptomatic sample. Sanger sequencing and BLASTn of the PCR products confirmed 99.03% and 99.8% nucleotide identity to the rapeseed phyllody phytoplasma isolate RP166 (GenBank accession CP055264). Additionally, the full-length 16S rRNA gene (1,521 bp) retrieved from HTS data revealed 99.8% identity with the same isolate. Based on the iPhyClassifier analysis (Wei et al. 2007; Zhao et al. 2009), the phytoplasma strain was classified as ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris’ subgroup 16Srl-B. ‘Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris’ has been previously associated with phyllody in oilseed rape in Poland (Zwolińska et al. 2011), rapeseed phyllody disease (Cho et al. 2020), little leaf disease of cotton and luffa in India (Kumar et al. 2010), tomato stunt in Cuba (Zamora et al. 2014) and other crop diseases. This study presents the first confirmed report of rapeseed phyllody phytoplasma infecting okra in Oklahoma, and United States. Okra is a significant cash crop for both small and large-scale farmers and widely cultivated vegetable in Oklahoma and various other states across the United States. It has numerous nutritional benefits (vitamins, minerals, dietary fibre and antioxidants) in the human diet and traditional medicine. Okra is susceptible to various diseases. Therefore, conducting a comprehensive survey of okra fields is crucial to identify potential disease threats and to implement effective measures for the protection and sustainability of this important crop.