Archivio Journal of Plant Pathology

Abstract:

Fig leaf mottle-associated virus 3 (FLMaV-3) is a putative member of the family Closteroviridae that has been found in fig mosaic disease (FMD) affected fig trees in Turkey (Elci et al., 2012). In May 2014, outdoor fig gardens in Mazandaran province (north of Iran) with FMD symptoms such as leaf mottling and systemic mosaic on young leaves were surveyed and 20 samples were collected from ten fig gardens. Total RNAs was extracted from all twenty samples and healthy fig leaves and used in RT- PCR with primer pair FLMaV-3s F (5’-CTGTATCTGTCATTACCTCTTCGGG-3’) and FLMaV-3as R (5’-CTGTATCTGTCATTACCTCTTCGGG-3’) designed to amplify part of the heat shock protein 70 homologue (HSP70h) gene of FLMaV-3 (GenBank accession No. EF654103). The expected 375 bp DNA fragment was amplified from one fig sample but not from the others. The DNA amplicon was purified and cloned into pTZ57R/T (MBI Fermentas, Germany) and sequenced. The corresponding sequence of the partial HSP70h gene was deposited in GenBank under accession No. KM516760. BLAST analysis showed that the sequence of the Iranian FLMaV-3 isolate had 96% and 100% identity with an isolate from the USA (GenBank accession No. EF654103) at the nucleotide and amino acid levels, respectively. Various viruses belonging to different genera have been reported in fig trees in Iran (Shahmirzaie et al., 2012; Nouri Ale-Agha and Rakhshandehroo, 2013; Danesh-Amuz et al., 2014), however, to our knowledge, this is the first report of FLMaV-3 naturally infecting fig in Iran.