Journal of Plant Pathology Archive

Abstract:

Apricot pseudo-chlorotic leaf spot virus (APCLSV), genus Tri- chovirus, family Betaflexiviridae, infects several Prunus species in- cluding apricot (Prunus armeniaca), plum (P. domestica), Japanese plum (P. salicina) and peach (P. persica). APCLSV has been report- ed from Italy, Spain, France, Hungary, Turkey, Jordan and Aus- tralia (Candresse et al., 2011). In April 2011, leaf samples from eight different peach trees were randomly collected from one or- chard in Qingdao city (Chinese province of Shandong) and their total RNAs, extracted according to He et al. (2011), were analysed in RT-PCR using primers (ACLSV-F1: 5’-TCTGCAAGA- GAATTTCAGTT-3’ and ACLSV-R1: 5’-GTCTACAGGCTATT- TATTATAAG-3’) that were custom-designed to amplify the com- plete coat protein (CP) gene of APCLSV and Apple chlorotic leaf spot virus (ACLSV). A 800 bp RT-PCR amplicon was obtained from one sample (SQ7). Amplicons from other samples showed 87.1-96.7% and 95.3-98.4% identity at the nucleotide (nt) and amino acid (aa) levels with APCLSV isolates from apricot (AY713380) and plum (AY713379) and still others had ca. 85% and 94% identity at the nt and aa level with ACLSV. The presence of APCLSV was confirmed by RT-PCR using virus-specific primers (APCLSV-F2: 5’-TGGTTAGGTCCAATAACTCC-3’; APCLSV-R2: 5’-GGATGATCCTGGTTTGACAG-3’) that ampli- fied products of the expected 1,288 bp in size. The CP sequence of APCLSV-SQ7 was deposited in GenBank under the accession No. JN873309. Since sample SQ7 was infected by both APCLSV and ACLSV, the symptoms induced by APCLSV could not be deter- mined. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first identification of APCLSV in China.